‘I’ll make this as brief as possible,’ he said, cutting into their squabble. ‘Maria, I spoke to Mother Veronica and Sister Celine yesterday.’
‘Did you?’ With her next breath in, Maria’s chest froze from the inside. She was guarded, though she didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t confessed everything anyway. But she couldn’t help wondering what they’d said.
‘I couldn’t get a useful testimony out of Veronica, I’m afraid. She’s in a nursing home and has dementia.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Maria said.
‘She claimed she couldn’t remember Peter Cunningham.’
Maria wanted to prod him, intrigued by his choice of the word ‘claimed’. But she kept her peace and waited for more.
‘Sister Celine, on the other hand, was more interesting.’
Maria couldn’t help but chuckle gently. ‘She was always interesting. You never knew what you’d get in answer to the simplest question.’
‘Maria, I’m just going to point out that you’re talking,’ Tansy said. Maria waved her away.
George gave a half smile. ‘Yes. She is quite a character. The thing is, she said something that made me think. She was very down on Peter Cunningham, as you’d expect.’
‘She didn’t like him one bit,’ Maria agreed, compressing her lips. ‘What did she say, out of interest? If you’re allowed to tell me, of course.’
He tapped his foot. ‘She said he died like the rat he was.’
Maria recoiled. It seemed such a harsh thing to say. Her reaction was entirely ridiculous, of course, since she was the one who’d actually killed the man.
‘The other thing you should know is that, recently, I organised for Peter’s body to be exhumed.’
Beside her, Tansy gasped. Now Maria was silent.
‘Science and technology has advanced considerably since the seventies and we discovered something new.’
Maria held her breath.
‘We found evidence of strychnine poisoning.’
‘Strychnine?’ Maria whispered.
‘Yes. And putting the pieces together with the sequence of events in your confession, Celine’s history, and her job at the convent, about which she was so passionate . . .’
Maria’s hands flew to her face. ‘The organs?’ she mumbled from behind her fingers.
George nodded.
‘What? What?’ Tansy beseeched.
‘The rats.’ Maria dropped her hands. ‘Oh no, no, no!’ She stood up from the couch, propelled by adrenaline.
‘What?!’ Tansy pleaded.
‘She hated rats so much,’ Maria said, pacing. ‘She loved the organs and hated the rats. She used to . . .’ her heart fluttered, ‘. . . she used to poison them.’
‘With strychnine,’ George said.
‘And she’d just fed him his last supper . . .’ Maria whispered. She felt hot all over. Her legs turned to jelly and she stumbled, reaching for the couch. George jumped to her aid and helped her back to a seated position.
‘In your testimony to me, you explained that Peter had just been to afternoon tea, yes. And that he was burping and sweating and breathing hard. It was the beginning of the poisoning. Strychnine works very quickly. By the time you’d put the bee on him, he was already dying. The swelling in his throat . . .’ He rocked his head from side to side. ‘Sure, some of that may have been from the bee, but it’s unlikely. Anaphylaxis usually takes more than a few seconds, which you say was all the time between the bee sting and the fall into the well. He was going to die anyway.’
Maria shook her head vehemently. ‘But I let him fall. And I, I still tried to kill him.’
The policeman’s eyebrows rose. ‘It’s certainly unusual to have two people at once try to kill someone,’ he said. ‘And add an accidental fall to it as well . . .’
‘What will happen now?’ Tansy asked. ‘Is Maria free to go? Or will she still be charged?’
‘It’s not entirely up to me,’ George said. ‘My supervisor, Blaine Campbell, ultimately has a big say in how this moves forward from here. But I’m certainly hopeful we can get a much better outcome for your aunt than we were previously looking at.’
‘Oh, wow,’ Tansy said, taking Maria’s hand in hers and patting it repeatedly, as though encouraging herself as much as Maria.
‘I also spoke to Sister Sarah,’ George said, looking at Maria once more.
‘Sarah?’ Her hand went to her throat, as she ached with longing to see Sarah once more. She’d had no correspondence with her since she left the convent.
George nodded. ‘She told me all about the letters you both exchanged and, fortunately for us, she kept all the ones you’d sent her. There’s a lot of evidence there of the cover-up that was going on. I don’t suppose—I know it’s a long shot, but I don’t suppose you still have her original letter? The one warning you about Peter?’
Maria nodded. ‘Yes, I do.’
George looked as though he might leap in the air and pump his fist.
‘You told me you burned it,’ Tansy said, incredulous.
‘It’s in the bottom of my rosary case, beneath the velvet cushion. I hid it there, thinking I might need it one day, and it’s been sitting there all these years.’ Maria turned to Tansy. ‘I just wanted to protect the letter, knowing how important it was. I should have trusted you. I’m sorry.’ She rose and went to the bedroom to retrieve the case from the small bedside table, her heart thumping wildly, her hands shaking.
She carried it back to the lounge room and pried open the lid, her thumb and fingers fitting perfectly into the imprints just as they’d always done; she lifted the cushion and plucked out the letter, folded neatly into many small squares. She opened it, cast her eyes down over Sarah’s squashed cursive writing—the kind you didn’t see anymore except from other people her age—and handed it to George. He perused it briefly, nodded, folded it again and tucked it into his folder.
‘I’m confident that we can lay charges against Ian Tully,’ he said. ‘And as you say, he’ll likely implicate you too.’
‘Yes, he will.’
‘But he’ll be right ticked off when he finds out we already know.’ George smiled.
Maria laughed with relief, then burst into tears, her hands supporting her head while Tansy rubbed her back. Everything would be okay now, she knew it. She felt it deep in her bones. Whatever happened, whether or not she went to jail for attempted murder, it would all be okay. What she’d done was terrible. But now she knew she wasn’t alone. In truth, she’d never been alone—her fellow sister Celine had been with her in spirit, sharing her burden. And now, thanks to Tansy, she had her family back and she’d never be alone again.
36
Two pelicans, with huge wingspans and long pink beaks, lowered their feet like the wheels of an aeroplane as they touched down onto the rippling surface of the Noosa River. They pulled up effortlessly and began to paddle along side by side. They circled towards the sandy bank of the parkland along Gympie Terrace, the wide green public strip that ran between the water and the road, shops and restaurants on the other side. Tansy loved the pelicans; they looked like a bunch of old men with their nearly bald heads, save for a few spiky wisps on top, and gathered around the jetties, clacking their beaks and deftly catching fish heads thrown to them by fishermen.
‘That’s what you’ll be doing this time tomorrow at Sydney airport to get your connecting flight,’ Rose said, pointing to another black and white pelican coming in to land. ‘They’re so much like planes, aren’t they?’
Tansy nodded, smiling. She and Rose were sitting together with Enid and Katarina in one of the wooden picnic pavilions, a colourful Happy Birthday sign stretched between the posts, and streamers wrapped around the beams. The park was filled with kids playing with bats and balls, or riding scooters or bicycles. There were dog walkers, Lycra-clad joggers, and women lying on blankets in the warm winter sunshine and reading.
Leo was nearby, being camp counsellor of sorts, entertainin
g Rose’s four children and Toby. They were playing cricket with yellow plastic bats and a soft ball. A woman walked by with a grey and white Old English sheepdog, its silky coat swishing as it trotted, and its hair pinned back from its eyes with a pink clip. Little Amy left her post in outfield and rushed to the dog to ooh and aah. She had a similar clip in her own hair. Rose smiled, watching her daughter.
‘I wonder what it would be like to live on a houseboat,’ Enid said, her gaze out towards the water where hire boats were moored to the jetty, bobbing gently in the wake cast by passing vessels—a cruise boat, the Noosa ferry, kayaks, dinghies, an occasional jet boat. She reached across the picnic table for another bread roll, working her way through a tub of butter, preparing the rolls for the sausages and onions that Finlay, Jordan and Alastair were presiding over at the nearby gas barbecue.
‘I couldn’t do it,’ Tansy said. ‘I’d be terrified of drowning, and of course of being eaten by sharks.’
‘Not in the river, though,’ Enid said.
‘Bull sharks are common in the river,’ Tansy countered.
‘But bull sharks don’t eat people, do they?’ Rose said. ‘I couldn’t do it because my kids would drive me crazy in the first twenty minutes all stuck in such a small space.’
‘At least you could just pull up on any island or sandbank you wanted to,’ Katarina put in, sipping mineral water. ‘You could just toss them over the edge and make them swim until they were exhausted. They could catch their own fish for dinner and read books in bed. Sounds lovely.’
Rose glanced down at Katarina’s belly. ‘That all sounds very idyllic, because it’s a fantasy.’ She laughed. ‘You just wait until you’ve got two. They gang up on you.’
‘It’s school holidays soon, isn’t it?’ Tansy said.
‘Yes,’ Katarina confirmed cheerfully.
‘Well then,’ Tansy said, addressing Rose, ‘Why don’t you bring the kids up here for a week? You can stay at our place. Leo won’t mind.’ She reached for a cracker and cheese to give herself something to fiddle with while the early onset of homesickness trickled through her.
Rose stopped chopping and looked up from the tomatoes. She was very down on herself now that Sam had left; she put on a brave face for the kids, but became teary when they weren’t around. Tansy ached for her, and it also made her that much more determined to cherish Dougal. Now her sister’s expression was hesitant. ‘Are you serious?’ she asked.
‘Sure, why not?’
Rose bit her lip. ‘Sam has them for a week of the holidays,’ she said, the words catching in her throat, revealing her disbelief of this new marital situation. ‘But it would be great to get away with them. And it would give them something else to focus on right now. It’s been . . . well, of course it’s hard on them, with their father gone.’ Tears threatened.
Leo arrived at the table then, sweating. He tugged a bottle of lemonade out of the ice and cracked the cap.
‘Then again,’ Rose said, ‘I’m not sure I could handle all the kids on my own in an unfamiliar place. What if one of them drowned?’ She was serious, Tansy could see, anxious about solo parenting.
‘Who’s drowning?’ Leo said, reaching for a handful of potato chips and stuffing the lot into his mouth with loud crunching and copious licking of fingers. Tansy filled him in on her offer to Rose.
‘I’ll help,’ he said, pulling off his cap, smoothing his hair back from his forehead and replacing the cap once more. Rose looked doubtful. ‘Seriously,’ he said. ‘It’ll be great. I’ll take them to the movies too, and we could go to Australia Zoo or something.’ He was bouncing on his feet now, energised by the thought. Actually, now Tansy thought about it, he’d been much happier in general since deciding to leave uni.
She encouraged Rose to accept the offer.
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ Rose said, rubbing her nose self-consciously. ‘Thank you.’
‘No problem,’ Leo said, and left the pavilion once more, heading back to the cricket game. ‘Hey, kids, guess what?’ he shouted.
‘What’s the latest with him and uni?’ Florrie asked, pulling the plastic wrap off the tops of the salad bowls.
Tansy raised her eyebrows. ‘He’s having six months off, and then who knows? He’s going to take some more shifts at the cafe and he wants to do a barista course. Speaking of which,’ she looked around the parklands, ‘where are our coffees?’
‘A barista course? Like you did?’ Florrie said.
‘Yes. Strange, isn’t it?’
Rose disagreed. ‘He could travel around the world and pick up work anywhere with those skills. And you loved it.’
‘True.’
‘And it all worked out for you.’
‘You don’t think he’s making a mistake, not finishing uni?’ Given how invested Rose was in her own children’s schooling, Tansy was surprised at her attitude.
Rose straightened. ‘He’s only deferred. He can still go back. Besides, I’ve made some big mistakes, so I can’t sit here in judgement.’
‘None of us can,’ Enid said definitively. ‘I’ve certainly made my fair share of errors of judgement too.’
A grey-winged noisy miner, with intense yellow-ringed eyes, swooped in under the roof and dive-bombed across Rose’s head, darting for a bread roll. She squealed and raised her arms in self-defence, and the miner retreated up to a beam under the roof, cocking its head to the side to better examine the buffet on the table.
‘Cheeky bugger,’ Katarina said.
The men arrived then with the plate of sausages and onions. ‘Right, we’re ready to eat,’ Finlay said, winking at Tansy for no reason she could imagine other than that he was feeling heavy of heart at her impending departure. She smiled back, her heart lurching. He wedged the plate into a gap on the table, already crowded with salads and dips, crackers and cheese. Rose got up to clap and call for her children to leave their game and come for lunch. And finally Maria returned, carrying the trays of coffees she’d been despatched ages ago to fetch.
Tansy was still getting over the fact that Maria had loosened the reins on her tightly controlled market presence and allowed Trav the handyman to work the stall today. But of course Maria was making plans for the future when she might not be there. And since Petrice wasn’t entirely reliable, Trav was a good backup.
‘Sorry that took so long,’ Maria said, handing Tansy back her credit card and distributing the coffees. She’d stuck with black tea with a tiny splash of milk for herself, Tansy noted. ‘It’s busy over there. The coffee man makes art in the foam, with little teddy bears and love hearts and cats. People seem to love them, but it does take some time.’
‘That’s okay,’ Tansy said. ‘I was starting to think maybe you’d absconded from the law, hired a boat and sailed away into the sunset.’ She was only half joking. Nothing would surprise her anymore. If there was one thing she’d come to realise about Maria these past four weeks, it was that she was a woman with many interesting and surprising layers and Tansy might never fully get to know her. Still, she loved the sides of her she’d seen so far and could only wonder what she still had to learn.
They feasted then, the adults taking up the bench spaces and the kids sitting on picnic blankets or fold-out chairs. The sausages were hot and salty and super tasty, the onions dripping with tomato sauce as Tansy brought the roll to her mouth, the drinks cold, ice bumping inside plastic cups, the salad crunchy. They all laughed, sipped coffees, settled squabbles between siblings and had second helpings. And when the kids couldn’t bear to look at the beautiful birthday cake any longer, they sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Tansy and she cut into Enid’s cake, made with honey from Maria’s darling bees and topped with butter cream and candles.
Enid and Finlay had managed to call a truce. She’d accepted that there was no point in trying to bully him into going back to church and that she simply had to let him do what he felt was best—although, she’d confided to Tansy, she was still hopeful that one day he’d return. Florrie had convinced Katar
ina to join her for pregnancy yoga sessions and was sending her to a naturopath to give this pregnancy the best support it could get. Jordan was taking instruction in qi gong from Alastair for stress management, and Toby was helping to decorate the baby’s room; the theme they’d chosen, after discussion, was rockets. Tansy would have loved to help them create a nursery, but she’d just have to help from a distance. If Dougal had been here, she thought, it would have been a perfect family reunion, just as she’d wanted.
Sitting beside her, Maria had been silent for most of the feasting, as though she’d retreated emotionally into her cave. Or hive, perhaps.
‘You okay?’ Tansy asked, while the others were engaged in a heated debate about politics, something Tansy hated to get into. No one could ever be satisfied with the outcome of a political discussion.
Maria wore one of her pairs of grey trousers, sensible dark shoes—the kind you’d see nurses wearing—and the white cardigan Tansy had seen many times. Her short, unfashionable hair was brushed back sensibly. She looked for all the world like a nun. Tansy gave a small smile. Whatever Maria had done in her life, there was no doubting what was in her heart.
‘Yes,’ Maria said, ‘just tired.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ Tansy said. ‘You’ve been through so much in the past month.’
Her aunt took a deep breath. ‘And there’s a long way to go yet.’
Tansy winced. ‘I’m sorry I won’t be here to help you through that. I wanted to be.’
Maria shook her head firmly. ‘You can’t stay. You have a husband and a life to get on with. You have commitments and exciting new opportunities ahead of you.’
‘Bad timing, though.’
‘No such thing,’ Maria said. ‘There is just time, moving on. We all have choices to make. Some of them are good and wise, some are more complicated, but they’re still choices. It’s important for you now to go and choose your future with Dougal.’
Tansy swallowed a lump in her throat. ‘But what if you . . .’
‘Go to jail?’ Maria shrugged. ‘I’ll deal with it then. Besides,’ she gestured around her, ‘thanks to you I have a whole family who might come and visit me.’
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