by Meg Keneally
‘Rather high-handed of her, I must say.’
‘Ah, I don’t mind. And the fact might prove useful, anyway. Because, you see, I intend to accidentally leave it this afternoon.’
‘Why?’
‘We usually walk out of the Factory together, part company outside. Rebecca’s driver, Grogan, takes her home. She always offers to convey me here, but as it is out of their way I have always declined. Tonight I intend to accept.’
‘I see. So we have a ride in a trap and a sewing bag languishing somewhere in the Factory.’
‘Are you aware, Mr Monsarrat, that you’re an impatient and somewhat irritating man?’
‘So I’ve been told.’
‘I’ll answer you more quickly if you remain silent. When we are closer to Rebecca’s home than to the Factory, I will exclaim over the forgotten sewing bag and mention that there are some items of value of my own in there which I would as soon not leave locked up with convicts overnight. She will, I’m sure, offer to take me back there. And I will accept, on the proviso that she be delivered home first.’
‘So Grogan will take you back to the Factory gates, and you will go up to the guard …’
‘And say I’m on an errand from Mrs Nelson, which the driver will no doubt confirm if asked.’
‘And you will enter the Factory …’
‘And take some time to find the item, of course. Naturally, I will have hidden this shortbread somewhere during the day. I’ll deliver it to poor Lizzie, take a peek out the window and will be away again. Hopefully newly enlightened.’
‘I am not at all sure that I should allow this,’ Monsarrat said.
‘Is it up to you to do the allowing, Mr Monsarrat? Would you truly forbid me from taking a course of action I have settled on?’
‘I might, if I thought you’d listen.’
‘Good man. Now, I have a task for you as well.’
‘You are aware, of course, that I already have an employer.’
‘Oddly enough, I was aware, yes. And in that employer’s office there must be all kinds of records. I wonder whether you’d be good enough, at your leisure, of course, to trawl through them for any reference to any Female Factory convicts called Edwina.’
Monsarrat couldn’t resist an occasional glance at the baking shortbread as Mrs Mulrooney told him of her conversation with Lizzie.
‘Surely you can’t think Rebecca used to be a convict,’ he said when she finished.
‘It’s those wrinkles again, Mr Monsarrat. You always overlook them. This is one we cannot afford to overlook. It may come to nothing, but I’d rather know.’
‘Very well. I’ll do as you ask. As we are talking of wrinkles – I had a chat with Dr Preston yesterday.’
Hannah Mulrooney did not approve of Dr Preston. She had seen him come to the Female Factory to examine the women, and she felt that his efforts were somewhat perfunctory, and carried out in order to receive the stipend he was paid for the work rather than out of any genuine concern for the women themselves.
Her irritation was not lost on Monsarrat. ‘I swear, Mrs Mulrooney, I’ve given considerable thought to the logic behind your likes and dislikes, and I can’t discern anything resembling a pattern. You seem to take against people for no reason, and stay against them, what’s more. What’s the poor man done in your view?’
‘More what he hasn’t done. He may be forgiven, though, if he gave you some useful information.’
‘He very well might have. In the period between Grace O’Leary’s demotion to the Third Class and Church’s death, Preston noticed more marks on the arms of the First Class women. Bruising. Always on the upper arms, possibly made by a hand.’
‘By Church’s hand, no doubt,’ said Hannah. ‘I spoke to the convict girl, Helen, yesterday. She suffered similar bruising, and worse, from Mr Church. What do we do with the information?’
‘Nothing, for now.’
‘You seem to be doing a fair deal of nothing. If you keep at it, that girl in the Third Class penitentiary will hang.’
Monsarrat was surprised to find his muscles clenching at the thought.
‘I shall give some thought,’ he said, ‘to how to use my evening. Since there will be no one home to make my dinner anyway.’
Chapter 25
Grace O’Leary might not know it, Monsarrat thought, but this was probably the most crucial interview of her life. Superintendent Rohan would not, of course, have been the only one to see the Chronicle article. The management committee, the police and Eveleigh himself would very shortly be coming under intense pressure to take action. Monsarrat was reasonably sure that McAllister and Bulmer would happily instruct their selected jurors to convict the woman.
He was one of the only people in the colony with the slightest interest in helping her avoid a state-sanctioned death. And why should that be so? Surely it was none of his business? He was risking the disapproval of the colony’s foremost men, those whom he had hoped to impress when he had stepped off the Sally with his new ticket of leave in his pocket.
He tried the notion on – submitting his reports to Eveleigh, leaving Grace to the magistrates, extricating himself from the whole business and settling back into his comfortable kitchen, spending his days ignoring those who didn’t matter and trying to prove to those who did that a man could reform, could rise above his former penal status and become useful, perhaps even respectable.
He might, it was true, earn the respect in time of those who pulled the levers of the town. But he would lose his own. Indeed, the idea of walking away from the whole situation made him feel slightly ill.
His decision was made, then, and really it was no decision at all. Within the next hour he needed to find something in Grace’s words that could be used in her favour.
Though she was strangely philosophical about her own survival, she seemed to exert more effort on behalf of her fellow inmates. The sisterhood of the Factory appeared to have relied on her heavily, and judging by Hannah’s discovery that she was still directing activities from her cell, they continued to do so.
Perhaps those who relied on her included Lizzie.
By the time the guard had grudgingly opened Grace’s door (which had had a new lock fitted, Monsarrat noticed), he had worked himself into a state of frustration.
‘Tell me, Miss O’Leary, are you really content to die?’
‘Tell me, Mr Monsarrat, what have I to live for?’ The sentence ended in one of her rattling coughs. Even if she did want to live, the prospect was looking slim given her current state of health.
Monsarrat theatrically looked around the room. He went to the raw wool mattress, bent over and inhaled, gave a series of melodramatic coughs, clutched his chest and staggered, sitting down on the bench which had been there since their first interview.
‘Yes, I do see your point,’ he said, brushing imaginary dust off his sleeve. ‘Understandable that you’d be happy to leave this place, even if it meant waiting in another cell for a rope necklace.’
Grace glared at him. ‘Cruel of you to make light of my circumstances, Mr Monsarrat. I’d not have expected it of you.’
‘But why shouldn’t I make light of them? You are not expending any energy to extricate yourself from them.’
‘And what would you have me do, grow wings?’
Monsarrat couldn’t help smiling. The sentiment was startlingly familiar to one he had expressed while a convict at Port Macquarie.
Grace took the smile as more evidence of mockery. ‘I’m glad to have entertained you, sir,’ she said. ‘Now, if you’ve had sufficient diversion, perhaps you’d care to leave.’
‘In good time. It will be a shame, though.’
‘I fear I can’t agree with you.’
‘I’m stung. But I wasn’t talking about my departure from this cell. I was talking about your departure from this life.’
‘Kind of you to say so. I think you are the only one who feels it.’
‘I very much doubt that. You’re missed already,
you know. You remember young Helen? She has some fading bruises on her upper arm.’
The anguish that talk of her own death had not managed to call forth now appeared on Grace’s features. She looked very young suddenly, her eyes shining, and Monsarrat noticed that her hair was growing back, covering her skull in downy chestnut.
‘He wasted no time in getting back to her, then,’ she whispered. ‘The others are safe, do you think? Now that he’s gone, surely they are unmolested?’
‘Safe … Well, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting the new superintendent, Mr Rohan. Who, by the way, wants you tried, convicted and hanged. He’s not as … carnal as Mr Church, I’ll give you that. But his attitude towards those imprisoned here is less than sympathetic. I have no idea whether he poses any danger to anyone – on the basis of a five-minute interview with the man, I couldn’t possibly say – but you can’t rely on his good nature. And he may bring in a new storekeeper, for example. New guards. Who’s to say they won’t be worse?’
‘Still,’ Grace said. ‘It’s not certain that they, or the superintendent, will be worse, even half as bad. And if you say Rohan doesn’t seem the type to … help himself to the younger ones, perhaps they may be safe. What of the matron?’
‘Mrs Church? She’s gone, no one knows where to. A new woman is on the way, from Van Diemen’s Land. Until she gets here, Mrs Nelson is doing her best.’
‘Mrs Nelson … She continues to come to the Factory?’
‘Indeed, every day. Why shouldn’t she?’
‘Oh … I thought a lady of her refinement might have been put off by the grisly event.’
‘From what I know of her, she is not easily frightened. But it is a temporary arrangement until the new matron is settled in. And who can tell what level of protection, if any, she will provide?’
‘Still, they may find a champion in her.’
‘They may. They may not. It’s to be hoped they do, as their current champion seems intent on dying.’
‘And I ask you again, Mr Monsarrat, what am I to do about it?’
‘Live.’
‘Ah, yes, wonderful. I’ll live then. Splendid. And how am I to do that? You’ve said yourself, it does not look likely that I will be spared.’
‘Because you do nothing to defend yourself!’ Monsarrat said, unable to stop himself pounding his fist onto the wood of the bench beside him. The sound, and the violence it implied, made Grace step forward. She turned from the window, walked towards him until she was a scant foot away and stood there staring.
He noticed now how tall she was, merely a few inches shorter than he. He wondered if the Chronicle journalist who had referred to the Amazonian banditti had seen her.
And then, without conscious direction, his hands reached out and took hers. ‘Grace,’ he said gently. ‘The superintendent says this is the last interview I may have with you. And the governor’s secretary says that you are to be charged if I cannot find the means to exonerate you. Your situation is as precarious as it could possibly be, and everything depends on what you tell me today. Please, for the sake of the women here and those yet to come, tell me the truth. Tell me what you know of Mr Church’s murder.’
‘Why do you care?’ she said. Not bitterly, but in wonder that a hidebound clerk would take an interest one way or the other in the plight of the women of the Factory.
Interesting question, thought Monsarrat. Why do I? But as soon as he pressed the question, he knew the answer.
He thought of Sophia, found himself tensing with frustration and annoyance at her small pretensions, the rules she held herself to in order to gain approval from a society that would never fully give it. He thought of her treatment of Hannah, degrading a fellow former convict in order to rise herself up. Sophia did not care what rung of the ladder she was on, so long as there were more beneath her than above her.
Grace, with very little hope of a ticket of leave, saw her strength in the well-being of those around her. She seemed to view the Factory as an organism, and think that if there was a cancer in one part of the body, it would spread. Something in him, too, responded to her boldness. He realised that he would have quite liked to have seen the pirate queen leading the Amazons through the streets of Parramatta.
He looked down into her face and saw a frown on it, realised he was squeezing her fingers quite tightly. He relinquished them and stepped back, knocking over the bench as he did so.
‘All well in there? She hasn’t killed you yet, has she?’ called the turnkey from outside.
‘No, I am very much alive still, thank you for your concern,’ Monsarrat called out. ‘And I’ll thank you not to interrupt an official interview.’
‘Suit yourself,’ the guard called back. ‘When I hear you screaming, I’ll ignore it.’
‘As to why I should care what happens to you,’ he said to Grace. ‘Well … most of the women here will eventually leave this place. Marry, have children. Perhaps run businesses. It’s them, really, who will decide the fate of this town, this colony. And I would rather grow old in a place whose citizens learned of benevolence rather than bitterness at their mother’s knee.’
It wasn’t the whole truth. Not even halfway there. But it would do for now.
Grace went back to the window. Monsarrat followed her.
Looking over her shoulder, he had an unimpeded view of the stores. Out of the corner of one eye, he could see the opening in the wall which led to the main yard where Church was killed. He could also see the beginnings of the stone wall which separated the women from the solace of the river.
‘An ideal vantage point, really,’ Monsarrat said, ‘if you’re overseeing certain nocturnal operations. Particularly if those operations involve the stores.’
Grace looked at him, but there was no sign of surprise or panic. He doubted he could have stopped his face, under the same circumstances, from betraying the sickening wrench of impending exposure she was probably feeling.
He leaned closer, unwilling to risk being overheard by the guard. ‘Grace, I know what you’ve been doing, and I am not going to report you. But something went wrong that night, didn’t it? What did you see?’
She sighed, turned away. ‘I wasn’t asleep as I told you I was. When the murder happened.’
‘Was anyone else awake?’
‘Not as far as I could tell. And I’m fairly good at telling.’
‘And the turnkey? Was he there?’
‘Yes. Asleep, judging by the snores from the other side of the door.’
‘Hmm. Careful about saying that to anyone else. You could have sneaked out and done it yourself. Don’t glare at me, I don’t deserve it. I am simply telling you what they’ll say at your trial. That your confinement was perhaps not as secure as it could have been.’
‘All of this is true. And, yes, I probably could have got out many times, if I’d wanted to. But it would have done more harm than good.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because the only reason for me to go is to check on the girls. And had I been caught, it would have been worse for them. Mr Church, you see, liked to find interesting ways to punish me. Among them was paying particular attention to those he thought I was protecting.’
‘All right. You were at the window. That small one in your previous cell, with a view of the Third Class yard?’
‘Yes. It was a hot night, and as well as keeping an eye on the stores I thought perhaps Providence might send me a little breeze off the river. These things, I’ve now learned, matter when you don’t move all day, when you pace around the same four walls until you come to know every piece of oyster shell in the mortar, every splinter of the skirting board. It’s the cruellest of measurements. It wears out the soul, but not the body. And the body can be the worst prison.’
‘And you saw something, while you were keeping a lookout for your friends in the stores?’
‘I heard someone. And I didn’t want my girls to stumble into whoever it was, so I gave the signal – two owl calls – for them to
hide in the stores. And I kept watching.’
‘You must tell me what you saw in the greatest detail you remember. Omit nothing.’
‘I will do as you ask if you make me a promise in return.’
‘What is that?’
‘We will come to it.’
‘Very well,’ said Monsarrat, reaching into his pocket for his pencil and paper.
‘I saw a woman,’ said Grace. ‘Running from the main yard, along the river wall. Heavily cloaked, which struck me as odd given the heat.’
Monsarrat had been sure Grace was holding back some sort of information. But this he was not prepared for. The woman had seen the killer, and she was allowing the world to think that the killer walked in her skin.
‘You’re certain it was a woman?’
‘I wasn’t at first. But as she ran, the hood of her cloak fell back. She was wearing a sun bonnet.’
‘A cloak in summer, and a sun bonnet at night,’ said Monsarrat. ‘You did not raise the alarm?’
‘Why would I? Remember, I had two women hiding in the stores. They would have been found in any search. And of course I didn’t know what she was running from.’
‘Did you recognise her?’
‘No.’
‘The bonnet – some of the First Class women have them, do they not? They are provided with them for Sunday wear, if I am correct.’
‘True. But this was no convict. She did not run towards the First or Second Class sleeping quarters.’
‘Well, I spoke to the guard. He saw no one entering or leaving on the night in question.’
‘He wouldn’t have. She went through the gate to the wood yard. Do you know, they don’t even keep it locked? No need.’
‘No need? Wouldn’t people try to escape?’
‘Why? Where would they go? Even after the riot, most of us went back to the Factory without protest.’
