She took the snake path down to Kinross and walked into the police station to slap the knife and the genitals on the counter.
“I have killed Sam O’Donnell,” she said to the paralyzed constable on duty, “because he raped my baby Anna.”
Four
Birth and Death
HOW DOES an ordinary sergeant of the country division of the New South Wales Police go about this? asked Sergeant Stanley Thwaites of himself as he stared at the jellified mess on the station counter, more fascinated by it than by the knife or the Chinese girl, now sitting on a bench in the corner. The testicles in their sack were nondescript, whereas the penis was unmistakably what it was. Finally his eyes lifted and turned to Jade, whose head was down, her hands folded peacefully in her lap. Of course he knew who she was: Anna Kinross’s nursemaid. Patiently waiting outside St. Andrew’s every Sunday for Lady Kinross to reappear with her mental daughter in tow. He knew her name was Jade Wong.
“Are you going to give us any trouble, Jade?” he asked.
She looked up, smiled. “No, Sergeant.”
“If I leave the manacles off, will you try to get away?”
“No, Sergeant.”
Sighing, he went to the wall and plucked the telephone earpiece from its cradle, then depressed the cradle several times. “Put me through to Lady Kinross, Aggie,” he shouted.
Too public, he thought; Aggie listens in to everything.
“This is Sergeant Thwaites. Lady Kinross, please.”
When Elizabeth came on the line he simply asked if he could come and see her immediately. Let Aggie stew a while longer!
He assembled his party efficiently; if there was a body, he would need at least two other men—oh, and Doc Burton just in case Sam O’Donnell was still alive. Kinross had no coroner, that function relegated to Dr. Parsons in Bathurst, where the district courts were located.
“There’s been an accident at Kinross House, Doc,” he said above the sound of Aggie’s heavy breathing. “I’ll meet you at the cable car—no, there isn’t time for breakfast.”
So the party set off bearing the hollow covered stretcher of the dead, Jade in their midst, to find Doc Burton waiting grumpily at the terminus; while they ascended, Thwaites informed the doctor of Jade’s confession and the proof she had slapped down on the police station counter. Flabbergasted, Doc stared at Jade as if he had never seen her before, but she still looked what he had always thought she was: a loyal and loving Chinese servant.
They went first to the house, where Elizabeth received them.
“Jade!” she exclaimed, bewildered. “What’s the matter?”
“I killed Sam O’Donnell,” Jade said calmly. “He raped my baby Anna, so I killed him. Then I went to the police station and gave myself up.”
There was a chair nearby; Elizabeth sank on to it.
“We’ll have to look, Lady Kinross. Whereabouts, Jade?”
“In a shed in the backyard, Sergeant. I’ll show you.”
The dog lay dead not far from the red door. “Its name was Rover,” Jade said, poking it with a foot. “I poisoned it.” No fear or remorse on her face, she led the way inside.
Only one of the two constables had had breakfast; that he lost the moment he saw the contents of the bed, which had soaked up Sam O’Donnell’s blood so greedily that the only traces on the floor had dripped off Jade’s knife. The smell had worsened, incense and old excreta now intermingled with stale blood. Hand over his mouth, Doc Burton leaned over the body briefly.
“He’s dead as a doornail,” said the doctor, and remembered a word from student days. “Exsanguinated.”
“Ex-what?”
“Bled to death, Stan. Bled to death.”
Another huge sigh erupted from the sergeant. “Well, there’s no mystery involved, as the murderer has confessed. If you’re happy to write a report for the coroner in Bathurst, Doc, then I suggest we slide him into this here dead man’s stretcher and take him to Marcus Cobham’s funeral parlor. He’ll have to be buried quick or all of Kinross will smell him. No air in here.” He turned to Jade, who hadn’t taken her eyes off Sam O’Donnell, nor stopped smiling. “Jade, are you sure you killed him? Now think before you answer, because there are witnesses.”
“Yes, Sergeant Thwaites, I killed him.”
“What about the—er—missing bits at the station?” asked Doc Burton, whose own private parts felt numb, shrunken.
The sergeant rubbed the side of his nose reflectively. “I daresay that as they belong to him, they should go to Marcus as well. Can’t be stuck on again, but they’re still his.”
“If he really did molest Anna, he deserves this,” said Doc.
“That we have to find out. All right, Doc, you and the boys take the body back down the mountain. I’m taking Jade to see Lady Kinross and try to get to the bottom of this.” One hand detained Constable Ross. “When it’s done, Bert, better go out to O’Donnell’s camp by the dam and see what you can find. Like evidence that he knew Miss Anna. After that, all of you can take turns to question everybody in Kinross.”
“They’ll know,” Doc Burton said.
“Of course they’ll know! What difference does it make?”
Jade walked beside Sergeant Thwaites across the backyard and led him into the house through a service door, thence to the library, where Elizabeth waited. This was the first time she had ever used Alexander’s domain for her own purposes, but somehow she couldn’t bear to see Jade’s face in the brighter light of the other rooms. The sergeant too felt the significance of the business, and was grateful for the dimness.
Jade sat on a straight chair between Elizabeth and Stanley Thwaites, her face enquiring.
“You say that Sam O’Donnell molested Miss Anna Kinross,” the sergeant began, “but how do you know that for certain, Jade?”
“Because Anna knew the name of his dog. Rover.”
“That’s pretty thin sort of evidence.”
“Not if you know Anna,” Jade answered. “She doesn’t learn names unless she knows people awfully well.”
“She never gave a name to her attacker, Lady Kinross, did she?” Thwaites asked.
“No, she did not. She referred to him as ‘nice man.’ ”
“So the only thing you had to go on was the name of his dog? Rover? It’s about as common a name for a dog as Fido.”
“A blue cattle dog, Sergeant. When Anna saw Mr. Summers’s blue cattle dog, she called it Rover. Its name is Bluey. Sam O’Donnell’s blue cattle dog was called Rover,” said Jade firmly.
“The breed is quite new,” Elizabeth ventured. “In fact, as I didn’t know this Sam O’Donnell or his dog, I thought that Mr. Summers’s Bluey was the only specimen in Kinross.”
“There must be something else,” said Thwaites, despairing.
Jade shrugged, unimpressed. “It was all the proof I needed. I know my baby Anna and I know that man raped her.”
Though he persisted for a further half an hour, Sergeant Thwaites could get no more from Jade.
“I can hold her in the Kinross cells tonight,” he said to Elizabeth as he prepared to leave, “but tomorrow I’m going to have to send her to Bathurst, where she will be charged. There are facilities for women prisoners at the Bathurst Gaol. You’ll have to apply to the Bathurst authorities for bail, but there’s no resident judge, just three stipendary magistrates who can charge her, but can’t otherwise deal with a capital crime. What I do suggest, Lady Kinross, is that you engage a legal firm to help you and Miss Wong.” Sudden formality.
“Thank you, Sergeant. You’ve been very kind.” Elizabeth shook his hand, then stood at the front door watching his burly bulk roll across the lawn toward the cable car, Jade’s slender little figure walking passively beside him.
A telephone call to the Kinross Hotel told her that Miss Ruby was on her way up the mountain.
“Jesus, Elizabeth!” Ruby cried, erupting into the library, where Elizabeth was still ensconced. “The news is all over town that Jade cut off Sam
O’Donnell’s private parts, stuffed them in his mouth and forced him to eat them before giving him the Chinese Death of a Thousand Cuts! Because he raped Anna!”
“The essence is true, Ruby,” said Elizabeth calmly, “though the deed wasn’t quite as macabre as that. Macabre enough. She did cut off his private parts, but took them to the police station and confessed to murder. She’s convinced that it was Sam O’Donnell got at Anna. Did you know him?”
“Only in passing. He never drank at the hotel—didn’t drink at all, people are saying. Theodora Jenkins is a cot case—he was painting her house, and she thinks the sun rises out of his arse. Denies he could have had anything to do with Anna. A real gentleman, wouldn’t even come inside to wash his hands. The C of E parson is up in arms too, prepared to go to the stake that Sam O’Donnell was an absolutely upright citizen.”
Ruby’s hair was falling down, so hastily had she dealt with it, and she hadn’t stopped to lace her corsets; did I not know what a wonderful woman this is, thought Elizabeth, horribly detached, I would deem her a blowsy tart, mutton dressed up as lamb.
“Then there will be trouble in all directions,” she said.
“It’s dividing the town down the middle already, Elizabeth. The miners and their wives are on Jade’s side, all the spinsters, widows and Bible-bashers have lined up behind Sam O’Donnell. The refinery and workshop people are going either way. Not everyone has forgotten that he tried to stir up trouble here last July and August,” said Ruby, rubbing a shaking hand across her face. “Oh, Elizabeth, tell me that Jade killed the right man!”
“I am convinced of it because I know how close Jade’s always been to Anna. Every look, every word, every gesture that Anna makes tell Jade stories that even I cannot plumb.”
She went on to tell Ruby about the dog, upon which Jade had based her decision to kill its owner.
“That won’t impress a judge,” said Ruby.
“No, it won’t. Sergeant Thwaites—he was very kind, Ruby—recommended that I engage a legal firm immediately, but I don’t even know the name of Alexander’s lawyers—do I need solicitors, or barristers? And don’t firms specialize?
“Leave it to me,” said Ruby briskly, glad to have something concrete to do. “I’ll cable Alexander, of course—he’s at his gold mine in Ceylon—and I’ll have the Apocalypse lawyers depute the right firm to care for Jade’s interests.” She stopped in the doorway. “It may be that they decide to send the poor little bitch to Sydney for trial if they feel that a jury drawn from a pool of locals would be prejudiced. In my opinion a city jury would be worse”—she snorted—“but then, I’m prejudiced.”
NELL FOUND out as she was witnessing the removal of dynamite from the explosives shed, and raced up the snake path, too impatient to wait for the cable car. All the grief and horror that Elizabeth was too controlled to show sat upon Nell nakedly as she stared at her mother, tears making visible runnels down her dirty face, her slight breast heaving under the stained overalls.
“Oh, it can’t be true!” she cried after Elizabeth told her the story. “It can’t be true!”
“What can’t be true?” Elizabeth asked levelly. “That Jade killed Sam O’Donnell, or that Sam O’Donnell was the one who got at Anna?”
“Do you ever feel, Mum? Do you ever feel? You’re sitting there like a mannequin in a shop window—Lady Kinross to a tee! Jade is my sister! And Butterfly Wing is more my mother than you’ve ever been, God knows! My sister has confessed to murder—how could you let her do that, Lady Kinross? Why didn’t you clap your hand over her mouth if you could shut her up no other way? You let her confess! Don’t you understand what that means? She won’t be tried at all! You only try someone if there’s a doubt of guilt. That’s the jury’s job—the jury’s only job! A man or woman who confesses and doesn’t recant is simply put in the dock to be sentenced by a judge.” Nell turned on her heel. “Well, I’m off to the police station to see Jade. She has to recant! If she doesn’t, they’ll hang her.”
Elizabeth heard it all, heard the hatred—no, not hatred, dislike—in her daughter’s voice, and turned the bitter words over in her heart acknowledging their truth. Someone has put a stopper in the bottle that holds my spirit, my soul, and glued it there for all eternity. I will burn in Hell, and I deserve to burn in Hell. I’ve been neither wife nor mother.
“I suggest,” she called after Nell, “that you have a bath and change into a dress if that’s where you’re going.”
BUT JADE REFUSED to recant. Sergeant Stanley Thwaites would never have dreamed of forbidding Miss Nell to see the prisoner, so Nell was allowed into the one cell saved for violent offenders, sequestered from the half-dozen cells wherein drunks and petty thieves were incarcerated.
“Jade, they’ll hang you!” Nell cried, weeping again.
“I don’t mind being hanged, Miss Nell,” Jade said gently. “What matters is that I killed Anna’s raper.”
“Rapist,” Nell corrected automatically.
“He ruined my baby Anna, he had to die. No one else would have acted, Miss Nell. It was my job to kill him.”
“Even if you did kill him, Jade, deny it! Then you’ll have a proper trial, we can bring up all the extenuating circumstances, and I’m positive that Daddy will engage barristers who could—who could get Jesus freed by Pontius Pilate! Deny it, please!”
“I couldn’t do that, Miss Nell. I did kill him, and I am proud that I killed him.”
“Oh, Jade, nothing is worth a life, especially your life!”
“That is wrong, Miss Nell. A man who tricks a little child like my baby Anna into serving his disgusting wants and fills a little child like my baby Anna with his stinking slime, is no man. He deserves everything I did to Sam O’Donnell. I would do it again, and again, and again. I live it in my mind as joy.”
And from that stand Jade would not budge.
The next day at dawn she was put into the police wagon and taken to Bathurst Gaol, one constable driving the team, another sitting beside her. They feared her yet did not fear her. When Sergeant Thwaites decreed no manacles they thought him foolish, but the journey passed without incident. Jade Wong was delivered into captivity at about the same moment as the body of Sam O’Donnell was interred in the Kinross cemetery, the cost of his burial borne by Theodora Jenkins and several other grieving, distraught women. The Reverend Peter Wilkins gave a moving eulogy at the graveside—best be sure not to offend God by having the body in the church in case he had interfered with Anna—and the mourners picked their way between the wreaths, sobbing behind their black veils.
Though the police searched O’Donnell’s camp and the ground around it with admirable zeal and thoroughness, they found nothing to connect the fellow with Anna Kinross. No items of feminine clothing, no trinkets, no initialed handkerchief—nothing.
“We opened his tins of paint and emptied them, we took his brushes apart, we unpicked the seams of his clothes, we even made sure that he hadn’t hidden anything between the leaves of bark on his humpy roof,” said Sergeant Thwaites to Ruby. “My word of honor, Miss Costevan, we looked everywhere. It wasn’t as if he lived slipshod, either. Neat as a pin for a camping man—had a clothesline rigged up, a washing tub, his food all in old bikkie tins to keep the ants out, boot polish and boot brushes, clean sheets on his palliasse—yes, neat as a pin.”
“What will happen now?” Ruby asked, looking every year of her age.
“I understand that the stipendary magistrates have been authorized to charge her, and that bail will be refused as it is a capital crime.”
BY NOW THE news had broken in Sydney, where the newspapers printed all the gory details without actually mentioning what parts of Sam O’Donnell’s anatomy had been severed and stuffed in his mouth, though they implied that he had been forced to eat them. Editorials tended to concentrate upon the hazards of employing Chinese servants, using the death of Sam O’Donnell as additional proof of the inadvisability of permitting the Chinese to immigrate. The yellower dailies and weekli
es were all in favor of mass deportation of Chinese already resident in the country, even if they had been born in Australia. The fact that the demure little nurserymaid proclaimed her guilt proudly was taken as evidence of total depravity. And somehow Anna Kinross was described as “slightly simple”—a state of mind that readers assumed meant that she could add up two and two, but not thirteen and twenty-four.
The cable found Alexander on the west side of the Australian continent, though he hadn’t yet notified his fellow board directors of his imminent arrival. He had lost none of his secretiveness with the passing of the years. His ship docked in Sydney a week after Jade was charged, and he was faced with a jostling crowd of journalists swollen by men from interstate and by stringers for the big overseas papers from the Times to the New York Times. Nothing daunted, he held an impromptu press conference on the wharf, fielding questions with the constantly reiterated plea that as yet everyone in Sydney knew more than he did, so why were they bothering?
Summers was there to meet him, shepherd him to his new hotel in George Street, far removed from those wretched steam trams.
“What happened, Jim?” he asked. “I mean, what’s the truth?”
To be addressed as “Jim” was novelty enough; Summers blinked several times before replying, then said, “Jade killed the fellow who interfered with Anna.”
“The fellow who did interfere with Anna, or just the fellow she thought interfered with Anna?”
“I’ve no doubt in my mind, Sir Alexander, that Sam O’Donnell was the man. I was there when Anna called my dog Rover. I saw her face—she was as happy as a sandboy, and looking for its master. If I’d only known that Sam O’Donnell owned a blue cattle dog named Rover, I’d have understood at once. Jade understood because she’d met O’Donnell and the dog at Theodora Jenkins’s house. He was painting its outside. But I didn’t tumble, so Jade stole a march on me.”
The Touch Page 38
