Ill-Gotten Gains

by Evans, Ilsa

  The screen now showed a black-and-white picture of a steam train, which was neither interesting nor particularly relevant. I was thinking about the certificate. ‘That would have been why Sam couldn’t find the marriage when he first looked. They weren’t married here at all.’

  ‘No. But they lived here for five years, at what we now call Sheridan House. It would’ve been very different for her. Mind you, the whole town was growing rapidly. There was an ironworks over towards Axedale and Petar also opened a lumber mill. And he employed a young foreman named James Sheridan who was also married.’

  ‘To Mary Frost,’ I said, thinking ahead. ‘So this all means that Kata was Beloved.’

  ‘But what happened?’ asked Petra, clearly fascinated despite her earlier misgivings. ‘If this was such a great love story, why’d she marry Sheridan the same year Petar died?’

  A sepia-toned Sheridan House appeared on the screen with an open carriage beside the porch. Lew swivelled his wheelchair to pick up his wine, draining the glass before continuing. ‘We know the house was finished in 1865 and that Mate died the same year. Stabbed in a bar fight. Then in early 1867 Mary Frost dies in childbirth. And on 29 March Petar falls from his horse and dies three days later.’ He jabbed at the laptop and the next slide showed Petar Majic’s death certificate, a plain document with almost indecipherable handwriting. ‘Now this is interesting. First, because the deceased is listed as unmarried.’

  I was still caught up with the realisation that Petar’s companion on his fateful ride, as detailed by Betty Rawlings’ reliable nan, could not have been Mate Dragovic after all. He was already dead. I filed this information away and squinted at the screen, trying to make out the words. ‘Unmarried? That’s odd.’

  ‘Sure is. Also, there was no doctor in the town so we just don’t know if Petar might have survived if he’d received medical treatment. We also only have the informant’s word for what happened. If you look at the certificate, you’ll see that this gentleman happens to be James Sheridan, who has just promoted himself from foreman to business partner. Was this factual or creative? Was he an opportunist or something more dire? We just don’t know.’

  ‘Look, this is interesting,’ said Ashley suddenly. ‘It really is. And my money’s on the wife and the foreman slash business partner being in cahoots. But surely there’s nothing here that anyone would be desperate to keep hidden. Nothing could be proved either way.’

  ‘Be patient, my man.’ Lew was beaming happily. He pulled up a new slide and then sat back to watch our reaction. This screen showed a toast-coloured newspaper clipping with close, fussy printing. We all leaned forward to make out the words, Petra and I both reciting under our breath. MAJIC – on the 23rd May at Bendigo. The wife of Peter Majic – a daughter. Both well.

  ‘Ah,’ said Ashley, clearly a quick reader. ‘Now that makes it interesting.’

  I followed his thinking, my eyes widening. ‘But a child changes everything! Even if Kata married James Sheridan later on, wouldn’t the baby have inherited from her father?’

  ‘Exactly.’ Lew stared up at the screen. ‘There seems to be no copy of Petar’s will, which is odd given he was clearly proactive about death. Just go look at his crypt.’

  ‘Not you,’ said Petra, digging me in the ribs.

  I ignored her. ‘Did the baby survive?’

  ‘Yep. Her name was Matija Tatiana Majic, and you’ll note that she was born one week before her father’s death. She was also born in Bendigo, which suggests there was some concern over the lack of a doctor around here. It also means that Kata wouldn’t have been in Majic when Petar fell from the horse. Or when he was being nursed.’

  ‘But if James Sheridan was so dodgy, why did she marry him?’ asked Petra.

  Deb shuffled forward on her chair. ‘We have a theory. All of a sudden she was a young widow in a foreign country, totally isolated with a new baby. Even her brother was dead by then. English was her second language and she probably wouldn’t have been able to read the death certificate or anything like that. Plus the odds are she’d been taking care of little James since his mother died. So if your husband’s partner –’ Deb paused to draw inverted commas in the air ‘– offers you marriage, would you really have a choice?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  Lew scrolled forward to the next slide, a copy of the marriage certificate I had seen in the Historical Society office. ‘This is where it gets interesting again. Our ever-reliable James has provided the information here too, I’m guessing, because suddenly Kata Majic, mother of one, becomes Kata Dragovic, spinster. In one fell swoop, he has wiped out her marriage.’

  I frowned. ‘But why?’

  ‘Come on, Nell.’ Ashley was grinning at me. ‘Think about it. James is rewriting the past, hedging his bets. He may not have killed Petar, but by god, he’s taking advantage of the opportunities that have been presented.’

  ‘He may have been genuinely in love with her too,’ said Deb, who obviously preferred the romantic interpretations. ‘It may have been jealousy. He’d have watched her and Petar together, so happy, and been burning inside. So when he got his chance, he just wrote Petar out of the equation. Hey, that might have even been the reason he did away with him!’

  Lew cocked his head at her. ‘You do realise that this is your great-great-great-grandfather, my love? Should I be worried that it runs in the family?’

  ‘Yes,’ replied Deb promptly. ‘So don’t give me any reason to be jealous.’

  ‘Fat chance!’ Lew gave a hearty laugh. ‘What the hell am I likely to get up to? Now you, on the other hand …’

  Silence stretched as they exchanged a meaningful look. Deb got up to give him a kiss. I guessed this was a conversation of long standing.

  Ashley cleared his throat. ‘Okay, Lew, now you’ve got my attention. What’s next?’

  ‘Well, clearly they set about raising the blended family.’ Lew flicked at the laptop and the screen returned to the picture of Kata with her children. ‘There’s young James and the baby George, born in 1869, and of course our mystery girl is Matija, on her mother’s right.’

  I was staring at Kata’s face. With this fresh information, I expected to find sadness there, or even an expressionless glance that spoke volumes. Instead, beneath her batwing brows she met my eyes with a stoic candour that suggested she had made the most of things. I spoke slowly, still staring. ‘I think it wasn’t quite what she’d had, but it wasn’t too bad.’

  ‘Until she died,’ said Lew with unnecessary abruptness. ‘Typhoid. She and the baby both, in 1872. Good old James was the informant for that death too, but this time he listed her as a married woman.’

  Ashley laced his fingers under his chin, à la Sherlock Holmes. ‘If I was James, I’d have married off my son to Matija as soon as the pair reached maturity. Then there’d have been no question about the inheritance at all.’

  ‘Well done, my man!’ Lew shot him a look of approval. ‘It appears that’s exactly what he planned. But it took me a while to get to that stage. The 1881 census only names the head of the household but there’s a fourteen-year-old girl living there so that has to be her. Yet by the 1891 census, she’s gone. The Majic Gazette set up operations in 1886 and the Sheridans feature in almost every issue, but not her. So there was a five-year window where she vanished. No death certificate either. I was stumped for days.’

  ‘But you eventually found something?’ I asked as the silence stretched.

  ‘Sure did! Never give up, that’s my motto.’ Lew refilled his glass and took a swig, then helped himself to cheese while the rest of us waited impatiently. Finally he looked up with a smile, enjoying his moment. ‘So … well, as often happens with this stuff, all you need is a break. See I’m also working on another project, for a lady who used to own a business in town, Svetlana’s Haberdashery. She retired last year and is now writing a history of the shop. Sounds boring, but it’s not. Mainly because when she took over the shop thirty-odd years ago, it came with all the paperwo
rk since the place opened in 1884. Including letters.’

  ‘In 1884 …’ I calculated rapidly. ‘Matija would have been seventeen.’

  ‘Yep. Fortunately the original Svetlana was a prolific correspondent and a bit of a gossip. But it’s one unsent letter dated February 1885 that helps us.’ He pressed a key and Kata was replaced by spidery handwriting containing so many flourishes that one line bled into the next. Petra got up to move closer but Lew, anticipating the difficulties, had zoomed in on a particular paragraph. The sentences filled the screen.

  Much agitation at the big house on Thursday last, when Mr Sheridan’s foster daughter Matilda ran away from home. Even more shocking as the girl has long been engaged to Mr Sheridan’s son. A nicer young gentleman you could not find. The whole township is agog and feelings run high for the family who have long been thought badly used. Mr Sheridan sent a man to Melbourne with his son to recover the girl, however we do not yet know of their success.

  ‘My guess is that they weren’t successful,’ added Lew, once he was sure we had finished reading, ‘because there’s simply no mention of her after that date. The letters only refer to her once more, in 1892, when James Junior marries Victoria Fletcher. And only a brief mention, when the author wishes him better treatment than he received in 1885.’

  ‘He waited for her a long time,’ said Deb wistfully. ‘Seven years.’

  Ashley was still leaning forward. ‘So … what happened to her?’

  ‘Don’t know. The problem is I have no idea what name she used. The letter refers to her as Matilda, which suggests she’s not using Matija any more, but there’s no surname. It could be Majic, or Sheridan, or she changed it altogether after she left so that she couldn’t be traced. Then at some stage she probably married.’

  ‘And had children,’ I said slowly. ‘Which means there could be an entire branch who have a prior entitlement to … well, everything.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Deb looked at me. ‘Meaning my family appropriated an estate that didn’t belong to them.’

  ‘So that’s the Discovery,’ I continued wonderingly. ‘Sam was right. It is huge.’

  Ashley was staring at the screen. ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’

  ‘Certainly worth killing for.’ Lew transferred the laptop onto the coffee table and rubbed his legs. ‘I spoke to a lawyer mate and he said it’s murky. In their favour is the fact they tried to track her down, but there’s also no doubt James Sheridan manipulated legal documents. That’s fraud. If Matija has descendants, it’d certainly be worth them taking action. Probably too late to reclaim Sheridan House but there were other assets that the Sheridans have profited from. There’d be a case for compensation.’

  ‘Not to mention the damage it would do to their reputation,’ said Petra, giving Deb a sidelong glance. ‘Sheridan House shouldn’t be Sheridan House at all. All those streets and roads named after them. The businesses. Oh my god, what about the commemoration this weekend? The statue of James and Petar! Best mates!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ashley again. He rubbed his chin. ‘So you think this is what Sam meant?’

  Lew nodded. ‘I reckon he got about as far as I have. He’d have had more source documents so moved faster. But he wouldn’t have tracked down the girl. Not enough time.’

  ‘And there we have our motive,’ I said. ‘Not just to bury what they’d already discovered but to stop them going further.’

  ‘So we have to decide what’s next.’ Lew leaned over and switched off the data projector. The hum stopped abruptly. He waited a few moments before continuing. ‘Ashley, obviously you’ve got your own agenda. But the rest of us –’ he glanced at Petra and I before finishing with a rueful look towards his wife ‘– we need to decide whether we want to go forward. If we track her down and find descendants, we’re opening a huge can of worms. The repercussions could be … pretty bloody massive. I admit I’m curious but I’ll put it to a vote.’

  ‘Before you decide,’ put in Ashley, regarding us all, ‘can I just ask that, if you go ahead, I’m given a couple of days before you start actually talking about it? Because if your theory’s correct, then the only other person who knows all this –’

  ‘Is the killer,’ finished Petra.

  ‘If there is a killer,’ said Ashley judiciously. ‘But it does give me a fresh avenue of inquiry. Grounds to re-interview a few people … of interest.’

  ‘I expect it does.’ Lew looked at him evenly and then turned to me. ‘I reckon after we’ve given Ashley here a chance to tie things up, you should write a big-arse article about it all. That is, if we decide to go ahead. Otherwise we just back out now. Forget we even went this far. So … in or out? What d’you reckon?’

  ‘In,’ said Petra without hesitation.

  Deb sighed softly. ‘Me too.’

  I stared at the blank screen, still seeing the image of Kata even though she was long gone. Her batwing brows, so like her brother’s, her stoicism, her little family. And then I nodded, because there was really no choice.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I wanted to say thank-you for your ‘Martha or Mary?’ column. My sister is a Mary, with career, travel, a wardrobe of clothes I’d kill for (rather pointlessly, as I couldn’t fit into them), while I’ve been pigeonholed – from childhood – as the Martha, homemaker extraordinaire. I’ve always been a little jealous but when I shared your column, my sister said she was jealous of me! We’ve resolved to bring up our daughters as Mary-Marthas, and tell them they can have it all.

  Lucy arrived the following morning before Quinn left for school. I was sitting on the couch, reading the newspaper by holding it at eye-level, an endeavour that required frequent rests and almost as frequent obscenities. I hadn’t even heard the doorbell so got something of a shock when I next lowered the paper to find Lucy standing just by the couch, staring at me. It didn’t say much for our resident dog or, indeed, for my security detail.

  ‘My god! Lucy! How long have you been there?’

  ‘Only a minute. How are you feeling?’

  ‘I’m fine. And you?’

  ‘Good. Um, I’m starting work a bit late this morning. Can I talk to you for a while?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to talk to you since Sunday. I left three messages, and one on Ruby’s phone as well. I even dreamt about ringing you last night!’

  Lucy slid herself across the side of the armchair, the rose tattoo on her ankle flashing beneath her long skirt. She folded her legs decorously and grinned at me. ‘What an exciting life you must lead, Mum, if that’s the best dream you can come up with.’

  ‘You wait till you become …’ I stopped abruptly, which only served to emphasise the stupidity of my comment. Lucy met my eyes unblinkingly, her smile still in place.

  ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Well, one of them.’

  ‘Luce!’ Quinn tossed her schoolbag aside as she went into the kitchen. ‘What’re you doing here? Wanna give me a lift to school?’

  ‘No. I need to talk to Mum.’

  Quinn rolled her eyes, either at the lack of a lift or the thought of talking to me. She dropped two slices of bread in the toaster and positioned her face directly above it, staring into the elements.

  ‘Coffee? Tea?’ I asked Lucy. ‘I’ve still got some of your organic green tea there.’

  ‘Yum. I’ll get it.’ She swung herself up. ‘And coffee for you, I’m guessing.’

  ‘Kettle’s on,’ said Quinn, placing a hand on her forehead to check the temperature.

  I dropped the newspaper on the coffee table and watched as they shared the kitchen. Quinn was very much like her eldest sister Scarlet, both in looks and personality, while Lucy was like none of them. It was as if she had been handed a different script. There was a translucency to her skin, not uncommon with pale blondes, that made her seem fragile, almost semi-permanent. If it wasn’t for the fact I had popped my head up at the very moment she emerged, I would have thought there had been some type of baby swap. Although why anyone would want to give h
er away, I don’t know.

  Quinn painted her toast with butter and topped it with sliced banana. She reached for the sugar bowl.

  ‘No,’ I said firmly, holding up a hand to prevent argument.

  ‘Why? It’s healthy, it’s got banana. Why can’t I put a bit of sugar on? That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Mum’s right,’ said Lucy as I shook my head. She was putting the finishing touches to our beverages, which unfortunately included sugar in my case. ‘Sugar’s poison. And addictive.’

  ‘Hypocrite,’ said Quinn to me, before ostentatiously turning her back to eat.

  Lucy brought two mugs over to the coffee table, carefully placing mine within reach. I thanked her and then we sat facing each other. I didn’t know whether she was waiting for Quinn to leave, or trying to find the right words, or even hoping that I would start. How did one begin a conversation about giving up one’s grandchild? As inevitable as I knew it was, did I even want this conversation? Talking would make it real.

  ‘Enjoy your sugar,’ said Quinn, slinging her schoolbag on her back. She waited for my attention so that she could cast a withering glance. Seconds later the front door slammed.

  ‘I thought I’d give you a few days to get over the shock,’ began Lucy immediately. ‘And I know you’re disappointed in me. I just wanted to tell you that although I didn’t mean for this to happen, I do know what I’m doing. I’ve even spoken to a counsellor at the clinic. I know it’ll be hard but I also know that this is the right thing to do. For me and the baby.’

  I swallowed a sigh, lest it give the wrong impression. ‘Luce, firstly I’m disappointed for you, not in you. There’s a big difference. I know you didn’t mean for this to happen – and however it did,’ I hurried on before she could share the details, ‘the truth is with a bit of bad luck, I could have been in your shoes at your age. Most of us could. And I’ve never made a secret of the fact Quinn was an accident. I was just fortunate to be in a stable relationship so I wasn’t faced with your choices.’