The Unfortunate Victim

by Greg Pyers

Sarah Spinks was the next witness, and the fourth female in succession to describe the strange man with the scary face. After her testimony, which by then was sounding much like a repeat of the testimonies that had preceded it, coroner Drummond adjourned for lunch.

  SERGEANT TELFORD HAD BEEN standing at the back of the courtroom early on, but slipped away late morning to pay a visit to the police lock-up. Constable Dawson admitted him and stood by outside. The sudden flood of daylight blinded Bonetti for the moment, as did the darkness for Telford.

  ‘Have you moved furniture in yet, Sergeant?’ Bonetti said, as if the Telfords’ domestic comfort was his chief concern.

  ‘We’ll have to buy some first!’

  The two men shared a chuckle, a counterfeit gesture that masked their undeclared mutual contempt; for Telford, Bonetti’s unforgivable deceit, and for Bonetti, Telford’s pitiable failure as a husband. What kind of a man would so neglect his woman? But Telford was certain only he knew the truth, and was enjoying his sport. He remained standing while the prisoner sat knees-up on the bunk.

  ‘Listen,’ Telford said. ‘This is no place for you, and I’m sure you’d know Mrs Telford is very concerned about you being in here, so please, why not just say where you were on the night of the 28th? Good heavens, whatever it is, surely it can’t be as grave as being suspected of murder?’

  Bonetti was unpersuaded, and, in the gloom, unreadable. Telford worked hard to conceal his annoyance, and to curb an inclination to throttle the little bastard, tell him he knew what had been going on, and that by God he’d see him in hell! But again, the gloom obliterated the subtle facial flickers revealing of a man’s mind.

  Telford continued. ‘A suspect was arrested in Geelong on Sunday. A James Mason. Fits the description; clothes, face, age. He tells the Geelong police that he’s never even been to Daylesford. Maybe he has, maybe he hasn’t; all that matters is that he wasn’t in Daylesford on the night of the 28th. Got his boss to vouch for him, so he’s a free man, just like that. There’s a lesson in this for you, I think, Mr Bonetti.’

  Each man stared into the shadowy face of the other, neither speaking, both hearing the magpies carolling outside. Telford broke the stalemate with a noisy exhalation. He called Dawson through the grille. The door was unlocked, and heaved open on squealing hinges. Telford looked back at Bonetti, sitting in the angled light, only his face hidden in shadow.

  ‘Do think about what I’ve said. A sobering thought that you’re now the only suspect in custody.’ He stepped out and, with squeals, the door was heaved shut.

  ‘Sergeant Telford.’ Bonetti was at the grille, his face striped vertically in shadows. Telford turned, the constable preparing to open the outer iron gate.

  ‘I do this for something more important than my freedom,’ Bonetti said.

  Telford waited, watching the dark eyes looking out at him as if of an animal blinking from its burrow.

  ‘A woman’s honour.’

  Telford said nothing, but his look gave him away: Bonetti knew the face of jealousy when he saw it.

  DETECTIVE WALKER LEFT THE Cheesbroughs at midday on Wednesday, well satisfied that he had wrung them dry of all the useful knowledge they had concerning their recent employee. While they could give him no indication of where Rose was headed after leaving — not even in which direction he turned once he was out the front gate — the times of his comings and goings were precious little nuggets. Trooper Brady was right; even if Rose was still at Cheesbroughs as late as 9.00 p.m. on the evening of the 28th, that left plenty of time for him to be at Margaret Stuart’s at ten-thirty. That he was late up on the Thursday morning only deepened the suspicion. The investigation was making fine progress, Walker considered, and he permitted himself a little smugness as he trotted with Constable Mansell back to town. He arrived at the station to news from Melbourne.

  ‘Remember my saying there was a miner on the Melbourne train from Malmsbury?’ Constable Tandy said. ‘Silly bugger drowned himself in the Yarra. Left his clothes on the bank, all folded, with a train ticket in his trouser pocket.’

  ‘Description?’

  Tandy shook his head. ‘Let’s just say that if he was Italian, I’m a Zulu.’

  Walker made no nod to the levity.

  ‘What about the dago in the lock-up? Bonetti,’ he said.

  ‘Still hasn’t accounted for himself.’

  ‘Too bad for him.’

  ‘His counsel’s been making noise.’

  ‘Pearson Thompson, that old coot? Why doesn’t he just die!’

  ‘He may well, shacked up with a whore half his age. Mary Foley, you know her?’

  ‘The woman he got off a drunk-and-disorderly?’

  ‘That’s her. A week or two with that’d kill any man!’

  This was a remark Walker did find amusing, and joined Tandy in a lewd snigger.

  AT TWO, THE CORONER’S inquest resumed, and in a short time it was Alice Latham’s turn to give evidence. This, the word of the dead woman’s mother, was what many in the gallery had been waiting for, and much murmuring and resettling in seats accompanied her amble to the witness box.

  In consideration, a chair was provided, and she sat in it with her hands in her lap, one resting in the cup of the other. She seemed tired, disengaged. Certainly her features were steady, and not those of a woman likely at any moment to break down before the court. After the swearing-in, Dunne thanked her for her attendance and made acknowledgement of the ordeal she was enduring. And then it was on to questions, firstly about her family circumstances. She answered, in the main, with her gaze fixed on no particular spot, avoiding the eyes of the jury, the gallery, Dunne, and Drummond.

  ‘I been married eleven or twelve years to my present husband, Joe Latham,’ she said. ‘I had three children by my first husband, and eight by Joe.’

  ‘And —’

  ‘To my knowledge,’ she interrupted, matter-of-factly, ‘none of my children from my first husband are still livin’. Margaret was the last.’ She looked away, alarmed at her own bluntness. ‘She were just seventeen years and two months when she married George Stuart,’ she muttered to herself.

  ‘What did Maggie do before she was married?’ Dunne said.

  Alice straightened her features and faced her questioner.

  ‘She were a waitress and barmaid, and good at it. And she were no tart, unlike some. And when she were home, she helped with the cleanin’ and washin’ and mindin’ the children. She always brought home her pay, too, and gave it to me — five to fifteen shillin’s a week when she were workin’.’

  ‘Your husband, Joseph Latham. Tell the court about him.’

  ‘He’s a tinsmith, works for himself and up at McKell and Studt’s. He were away eight months in New Zealand not long ago, on the gold, but still he sent fifteen pound back while he was there.’

  ‘So, a good husband and father?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘And what did he think of Maggie?’

  Alice took a few moments to study Dunne’s face, as if for an implication of something untoward in his question.

  She looked away. ‘Joe was very fond of her. At least … at least, until she were married.’

  ‘Your husband didn’t want Maggie to marry, did he?’

  ‘Not to George Stuart, he didn’t. But I gave my permission.’

  ‘George Stuart has told the police that Joe Latham beat Maggie.’

  Alice snapped her head to Dunne, and then up to Drummond. She looked away again.

  ‘Joe did beat her four months ago.’

  Noises of disapproval issued from the gallery.

  Dunne continued.

  ‘George Stuart said that Maggie told him that Joe Latham threatened to cut her throat if she married Stuart.’

  ‘Well, she never told me that!’ Alice huffed, and shifted in her seat as if her underwear was cons
tricting.

  ‘Maggie was frightened of her stepfather?’

  ‘She were a very timid girl, easily frightened by lots of things.’

  ‘Joe was so fiercely opposed to Maggie marrying George Stuart that he couldn’t forgive her for it, could he, Mrs Latham?’

  ‘I said as much before!’

  ‘So why did you give permission for her to marry, when your husband was so opposed?’

  ‘Because she were my daughter, not Joe’s, and it took all of her wages to clothe and feed her … Anyway, neither of us went to the weddin’. All Joe said was that Maggie would repent it —’

  ‘Marrying Stuart?’

  ‘Yes, but I never heard him threaten her. Never. You know, Joe even built the house Maggie lived in with George Stuart.’

  Alice was quite agitated now. Drummond and Dunne exchanged a look, and nodded that it might be time for a change in the line of questioning.

  ‘Mrs Latham, I do understand you must be suffering terribly. For a mother to lose her daughter in such horrible circumstances as these is almost beyond imagination.’

  Alice made no response, save for a slight shrug of her shoulders, which brought on a murmur in the gallery.

  ‘Would you like some water?’

  Alice nodded to Dunne that she would, and a clerk brought her a glass. When she’d taken a sip, Dunne resumed.

  ‘Tell the court, Mrs Latham, in your own time, where you were on that terrible night.’

  ‘I went to bed, soon after half-past eight. I can’t be sure of the exact time, as we don’t have a clock in the bedroom.’

  ‘Where was your husband?’

  ‘He were already in bed. He did get up about half-past ten or eleven, and lit his pipe. He were out of bed only a few minutes. He sat up in bed to smoke.’

  ‘Had your husband been drinking that day?’

  ‘He were sober as a judge, he was. And what if he had been drinkin’?’

  ‘Mrs Latham, your husband, by your own admission, had been violent to your daughter, and given his opposition to the marriage, and with drink —’

  ‘I told you. He hadn’t been drinkin’.’

  ‘Very well. And were you in bed when the police came?’

  ‘Yes. We’d only just dozed off.’

  ‘And what time was that?’

  ‘About three o’clock.’

  A murmur from the gallery revealed minds busy speculating on what Mr and Mrs Latham might have been up to, to be awake at that hour.

  ‘Did Maggie ever mention to you a man who lived in a tent close by her house?’

  ‘No, she never did say anythin’ to me. But I had heard there was such a man.’

  With no further questions to be put, Alice Latham stepped down, and her husband was called to take the chair, still warm from his wife. Alice was permitted to remain in the courtroom while Joe gave his testimony. He seemed overawed by the occasion — a belligerent man not accustomed to having to constrain his natural disposition.

  ‘Joe Latham,’ Dunne said, ‘what kind of a girl was your stepdaughter?’

  ‘She was a good girl. And, as far as I know, she never went beyond proper bounds with no man.’

  ‘Please, Mr Latham,’ Drummond said, ‘would you speak up, for the jury to hear.’

  ‘I beg pardon, Your Worship.’

  ‘You were on good terms with her?

  ‘Yes, we were on very good terms.’

  ‘Did you beat her?’

  Many in the public gallery leaned forward; this was the kind of question they had come for.

  Latham shook his head elaborately. ‘No! Never to hurt her. Only with my hands. I never used a whip or a stick. No, we was a happy family.’

  Alice Latham spoke up from her seat. ‘If ever he beat her, she deserved it.’

  Drummond looked to Dunne and made a decision. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Latham, but I must ask the constable now to remove you from the court. You can wait in the anteroom.’

  Alice shrugged, gathered herself, and stood for the policeman now by her seat. She turned away sharply to avoid his offered hand, and walked out. The signal was given and questioning resumed, this time from Harold Kreckler, of the jury.

  ‘Did you threaten to cut your stepdaughter’s throat?’

  ‘Never did I threaten her with such a thing.’

  Dunne followed up quickly. ‘How did you and George Stuart get on?’

  There was much of the cornered cat in Latham’s demeanour, not so much because of the questions, but that he was being questioned. Had he been able, he might have fled the room, or else leapt at someone. Drummond had to prompt him now.

  ‘Mr Latham, would you answer the question?’

  ‘I — I’ve known him nine months, and I never had no difference with the man.’

  A juryman was quick to interpose, ‘You didn’t approve of him marrying your stepdaughter.’

  ‘He did come to my house to ask my consent about two months ago, and I did refuse him. I told him she was too young. That was why I didn’t approve. And, I’ll say this, I never threatened to cut her throat when she did marry him! Never!’

  Latham’s combative nature had surfaced, and he snapped like a caged beast poked with a stick. Drummond cautioned him, and Latham had sense enough to contain himself.

  ‘Beg pardon, Your Worship.’

  ‘Did you know Mr Stuart’s working hours?’

  ‘No.’ Latham seemed affronted by the question, or else he was affecting incomprehension at why it was put.

  Coroner Drummond was indicating by glances at the clock that the court might have heard enough from this witness, bar final questions from himself, concerning the man in the tent.

  ‘I did see a peculiar-looking man, Your Worship,’ Latham said, seemingly glad to have the focus redirected. ‘About a month ago it was, near Maggie’s house. He wore a black hilly-cock hat, he had black hair, a beard, and no moustache, and he wore a black beaver coat. And cord trousers, definitely.’

  ‘You haven’t seen him since?’

  ‘No, but I could swear to him. He was a flash-looking fellow. He might have been a foreigner, but I couldn’t say for certain, seein’ as I never had a word with him.’

  Latham left the box with the setting sun streaming through the two windows in the court house’s west-facing façade. Drummond had made it clear to all concerned that he was determined to complete his inquest before the day was out. This wasn’t a trial, after all; all that had to be established was by what means Margaret Stuart had met her death — whether by her own or another’s hand.

  George Stuart now entered the box. He preferred to stand, and the chair used by the Lathams was removed.

  Mr Dunne extended his most profound condolences to the witness. Stuart nodded his appreciation, but curtly, revealing an impatience to be getting on with his testimony. Dunne obliged. His question was put, and George Stuart gave his account of the night of December 28th.

  ‘On Wednesday last, I left for work at twenty minutes past three. I returned very soon after twelve o’clock. The first thing I noticed was the barrel off the chimney top. I thought it must have been the work of the wind. I saw there was a light at Pitman’s. It was a very dark night. I went to the front door. It was closed, but unlocked. All was dark. I found a candle and lit it …’

  His head was down. He was trembling. The courtroom was silent, all faces fixed. He touched his brow, and his head came up. ‘I carried the candle towards the bedroom door. It was open. I went in, and found my wife dead on the bed.’

  That he had said this so straightforwardly seemed to disturb him more than the words themselves, for he uttered the sentence without falter, and only then did he sway on his feet. A quick-thinking Mr Dunne hurried to steady him.

  ‘When you’re ready, Mr Stuart,’ Drummond said, considerately, though the day h
ad been so long. A glass of water was provided. He drank it all.

  ‘I ran off to Pitman’s and gave the alarm. And then with Pitman and another, I went back to the house.’

  ‘Pitman’s your neighbour?’

  ‘Yes, the refreshment rooms. I should say his place is a grog shanty, a brothel.’

  ‘And what did you know of the man whose tent was up by your house?’ Drummond said.

  ‘My wife complained about him, on two occasions in all, I think. The first time she said he was making too free with her, asking her questions and telling her he would like her for a wife. On Christmas Eve, he came to the house when she was there. My wife locked the door, but was so scared she called over to Rothery’s later for the little girl. My wife complained that he would pass by the house several times, and look in and speak to her whenever he got the chance.’

  ‘Describe this man.’

  ‘Dark complexion, dark hair, dark eyes. He wore a wideawake hat and moleskin trousers.’

  ‘Did you ever speak to him?’

  ‘Once, when me and Maggie were out walking. He said good evening, and I said good evening back. He never gave me his name, and I never gave him mine.’

  ‘You have told the police that your father-in-law, Joe Latham, threatened to cut Maggie’s throat. Did she tell you this?

  ‘Yes, she did. She told me so before and after our marriage. She told me that her stepfather threatened to cut her throat when she was twelve years old! My wife also told me that her mother had told her that Latham had threatened her with vengeance, if she married me.’ Here he paused, long enough for Dunne to begin a new question, but Stuart was away again, and Dunne and Drummond nodded to each other that he be given his head. He went on, with some fire. ‘I married Maggie anyway, without her stepfather’s knowledge or consent. Her mother knew we were to be married. I showed her the marriage lines, and she showed them to Latham. Ever since, he has had nothing to do with Maggie, and she has been in great fear of him.’

  He stopped. He was spent, yet even in the dimness of the now lamp-lit court, peacefulness and repose could be seen in his countenance. The tension that had set his jaw and gathered his brow through his testimony had dissipated. Some in the gallery were dabbing their eyes and blowing noses. Drummond had suspended his note-taking, and Dunne and the jury their questioning. For several quiet moments, nothing stirred as each man thanked God he had not been dealt a hand such as that dealt the poor man before them.