I admired her for her writing and heard she made a pretty penny. It wasn’t my cup of tea of course, being for kids. We weren’t big readers in our house but Pearl always was a bit of a storyteller. She used to tell wild stories about her background and her past – I’m not sure if she ever spun you any of her yarns. I can’t hold with people pretending things that aren’t true.
My old dad wasn’t the easiest bloke to get along with but he was properly taken with Pearl. She was the youngest and she resembled Mum, so he spoilt her rotten. I don’t believe this did her character any good, as she thought she was the Queen of Sheba and could get away with anything. She had Dad twisted around her little finger. I found my father rather a cruel man with very strong mood swings and not shy of using his boots, fists and belt when we were out of line. Even when we weren’t, if you understand that, Miss Birdie. But I can’t recall him ever belting Pearl.
My father, Dennis Whistler, brought us all out from England on a government scheme. Our mother Mary, maiden name Browning, died after the voyage in tragic circumstances. Mum’s infant son disappeared from the ship – it was believed he’d fallen overboard without anyone seeing. You could never mention him to Mum or Dad without getting a belting. As I’ve got older, I’ve often wondered if I could have a brother living who might have been abducted by another passenger. My mother killed herself in grief over the baby’s disappearance and to escape Dad’s moods. Dad hinted as much one night when he was in one of his drunken rages, saying that our mother had done it on purpose to get away from him. He said Mum wasn’t right mentally, but I always believed that Dad had driven her to her desperate act by some cruelty that nobody would ever know about.
I know nothing about the English side of the family. I’ve never had any curiosity about them either. Bit too far away for me, love! If they were anything like our side then I wouldn’t have wanted much truck with them. Dad did say a couple of times that he had hated both sets of parents, Mother’s and his, but I never knew why. It wasn’t safe to ask questions in our house.
As for Ruth, she’s a gypsy and I’ve lost track of her. Neither of us are good friends with a pen. As I said, we’re not the closest of families, although it would be nice to bury a hatchet. If you track her down, please give her my address. We tried to contact her when Pearly died but no luck. She was never fond of her but she would no doubt have liked to pay her respects.
I was the eldest child and my father hated me. Ruthie was the middle one and he ignored her. She didn’t stand out in any way, I suppose. Pearly, he would do anything for – but his love was unsavoury to me. He treated her as another man would treat his wife. I suppose it didn’t help that Pearly resembled Mum, as I said. Both very glamorous-looking women. I didn’t get any of the looks passed down to me, more’s the pity. And Ruthie was also a bit of a plain Jane.
You asked me what I recall of Mother. Very little, I’m afraid. I seem to remember her reading me bedtime stories. She had a lovely oval face and long dark hair that she wore up. She laughed a lot but mostly I remember her crying. When I walked with her in the street, people would always turn and look at her. She was different from normal people. She could be a lot of fun. She would put together a puppet show and act out the characters, but there’s not much else I remember about those early years in England – just snow, people shouting, and once my mother being hit by my father with a belt until blood ran down her face. Lord only knows what that was about.
As for our time as children – I’m not much help there either. Money was tight. If there was extra it went on Dad’s drink or the trots, but I don’t judge him for that. Raising us on his own couldn’t have been much fun, could it? I don’t mind a drink or the gee-gees myself.
We lived in Hobart, in Bellerive. It was nowhere near as flash as it is today. Dad in one room and the three of us in the other. Us kids got along quite well back then, though Ruthie and Pearly did fight a bit. Pearl could be a bit painful at times, always running to Dad with some complaint and then out would come the strap. Once he beat me so much I fainted with the pain of it.
Pearly was a nice enough looking kid but nowhere near the beauty she became. I think Dad found it difficult when she got older. Men of all ages came from everywhere. Dad acted like a jealous lover and got the shotgun out to one of them one night. I think he loved Pearly a bit too much. In the end he drove her away with his tight hold on her.
When she ran off at fifteen, it damn near killed him. She was a selfish cow to do it after how good Dad had been to her all those years. After she bolted, Dad just sat in his room drinking. He didn’t bother with the trots or any of his old haunts. He got thinner and started acting like a man of ninety. I think his mind was going by that stage – he was always calling out for Pearly in the night and he’d soil his bed like a two-year-old. It was left to Ruthie to fix him half the time and she hated it. He didn’t want her, you see. Pearly never came for him. She went ahead with her new life and didn’t look back once.
Dad got pneumonia in the winter of 1922. That really finished him off. We tried to convince Pearly to visit him on his deathbed but she refused to come. ‘Let him rot in hell,’ she said in the only letter she wrote to me. I’ve enclosed the note for you.
I’ve probably bored you enough, Miss Birdie, with all this family history. I hope my ramblings have been of some assistance to your pretty self. If you’re ever near Bellerive Nursing Home, it would be lovely to receive a visitor. Since my wife died, things have been a bit quiet here. We weren’t blessed with any children. When you look at my family history that might have been all for the best. A rotten tree can only bear rotten fruit after all.
Good luck to you, Miss Birdie. Thank you again for the flowers. I wish you every success with your book. Pearl would have been delighted to know she would live on through your words.
Kind regards,
Benjamin Whistler
Enclosed:
Hello Benjamin,
Sorry to hear that things have been tough, old boy, but I’m not doing it easy myself here. I know you and Ruthie think I’m always good for a touch but times are skint. I’m sorry to hear also about Father but he’ll have to wear it, won’t he? After the way he treated me and our mother, he can rot in hell for all I care. I wouldn’t waste a tram fare visiting him.
Please don’t contact me again about Father. I’ve no wish to know when he eventually does die. He died to me a long time ago.
Your sister,
Pearl
Launceston, 1922
Some months later, with Maxwell’s help, I managed to track down Ruthie, who was living in Brisbane at the time. Her reply was far less expansive than her brother’s had been.
November, 1948
Dear Miss Pinkerton,
Thank you for the note regarding my late sister, Pearl. A most shocking way for her to die, wasn’t it? The press were awful. The lack of manners these days and general disrespect for others is quite shocking. There is little I can say to assist you in your book. I can’t see any point in writing about Pearl. Her terrible death was probably the most interesting moment of her life. She had very little success in her writing despite her claims to the contrary. The papers liked her for her good looks, not her talent.
Although we shared a room as we grew up, I do not know the woman who you know as Pearl Tatlow. She was an ordinary child who spent a lot of time daydreaming. She suffered from nightmares when younger. She wasn’t terribly bright at school and my father adored her.
If Benjamin is interested in contacting me, which I very much doubt, then feel free to pass on my details. He certainly never bothered to let me know when her funeral was. I would have liked to have paid my respects.
Sincerely yours,
Ruth Whistler
Penance
Pencubitt, present day
‘I do appreciate a little notice, dear, if you want to visit,’ Birdie said when she opened the door.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but I hoped you’d be able to help m
e,’ Sadie said. ‘It’s to do with Blackness House.’ Although still disoriented from the previous day’s sickness, she felt compelled to uncover more about the fire.
Birdie led Sadie into the front room where classical music competed with Dash’s barking. A bar heater made the room feel stuffy and cramped, not helped by the books and papers that lay scattered on the table. A man’s dressing-gown was draped over one of the armchairs. Sadie tried not to look at it. Was it Maxwell’s? It seemed unbearably poignant to think that Birdie still laid out or even wore his dressing-gown.
Flustered, Birdie kept apologising for the disorder, although the room was far from messy. She seated herself on the sofa, looking expectantly at Sadie. Sadie handed over the historical journal and watched her face as she read.
‘A most upsetting event,’ Birdie said, her tone neutral. There was no change in her expression. ‘Poor little Violet. They never discovered how it started. I think Violet herself was trying to burn something in her room and the place caught alight. She was such a pretty little thing, too.’
‘Was?’ Sadie said. ‘Is she dead then?’
Against the silence, the ticking of the large grandfather clock seemed like one anxious heartbeat. Birdie stood up to turn down the heater. ‘She may as well be,’ she said. ‘She would have been better off.’
‘Where is she?’ Sadie asked. A tiny strand of fear slithered through her veins as she awaited Birdie’s reply.
‘Don’t you know yet?’ Birdie seemed surprised. ‘This town never fails to amaze me. I would have thought you’d have figured it out by now, or somebody would have gossiped. I’ve spotted her myself hovering near Poet’s Cottage. I wondered if she was alarmed by your resemblance to Pearl.’
Sadie stared at her in disbelief and Birdie laughed. ‘I need to walk Dash,’ she said, and the dog jumped up, barking in excitement. ‘Walkies, Dash!’
Leaving Seagull Cottage, the two women walked together through the town, Dash leading the way to the beach.
‘When you see her sheep, you know she’s near. She doesn’t leave them for long,’ Birdie said.
Sadie must have looked as confused as she felt. Grazing on some grass beside the graveyard were half a dozen sheep.
‘Heel, Dash!’ Birdie shouted, and the little dog obeyed. Birdie peered around the headland. ‘She’ll be watching us,’ she told Sadie. ‘She’s wary as a fox. She’ll be worried about the sheep. They’re her family now. Poor little Violet.’
Sadie looked around at the familiar scene: the picturesque rambling graveyard, the wild Tasmanian ocean, the heather bushes, the cotoneaster with its vivid red berries, tussock grass, gorse, bracken and the purple-flowered thistles.
‘Look, there she is!’ Birdie cried, pointing.
Sadie looked and saw a figure. It was the cloaked woman in black. The woman uttered a terrible cry and turned and ran through the graveyard, her cloak flying behind her.
‘That’s Violet?’ Sadie was truly astounded. She found it difficult to comprehend that what she had taken for a ghost was not only a real live person but had once been the pretty girl she had read about in Webweaver.
Birdie gazed towards the headstones where the shrieking figure had fled. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Violet Bydrenbaugh. The last living shepherdess in Tasmania. Heir to a fortune she has left willed to her sheep. Sometimes she sleeps in Bradley’s Cave, at other times out in the fields with her sheep.’
‘And she still makes her way into Poet’s Cottage,’ stated Sadie. She turned to face Birdie, the wind whipping her face.
Birdie nodded. ‘Most likely. At least you’ve worked that out. The old sea tunnel is unsafe but no harm seems to come to Violet these days. She’s out in all weather on the roads. It’s a miracle she hasn’t been knocked down by a car. Come on, let’s go home and have a hot drink. Poor old Violet will be worrying we’re here to steal her sheep.’
When the two women were back in Seagull Cottage sipping tea, Birdie described the trauma Violet had undergone. ‘They did what they could with her face but it was so badly burnt,’ she said sadly. ‘Her vocal cords were destroyed. And her poor arms and hands!’ She shuddered at the memory. ‘They had been melted into claws. She came home to Pencubitt with her mother and was branded a monster by some of the cruel local children. Her mother tried to keep her at Blackness, but Violet started roaming the coast like a lost soul. It broke Diana’s heart to see her daughter like that. She died much younger than she should have done. Of grief, I’d say. She’d been so proud of Violet. To see the kids mocking Violet as a monster . . .’
Sadie was silent as she recalled her own terror when she had first seen Violet. Her heart went out to the woman: how cruelly life had treated her.
‘It’s best not to think about it too much, dear,’ Birdie advised. ‘She’s happy in her own way. Every so often she loses a sheep and we hear her wailing. Then one of the farmers will donate a lamb in spring or an older one if it’s not lambing time, and she settles down again. The days when she was young and ruled the world at Blackness House may have been lost to her, but she’s happy with her family of sheep. She made the papers a few years back and she’s incredibly hardy. She’ll outlive us all! There must be something to be said for outdoor living. And her hands, despite their deformities, are as smooth as a young girl’s. All the lanolin. But her face . . . dreadful!’ She sipped her tea, shaking her head in distress.
‘Why on earth didn’t she stay at Blackness?’ Sadie wanted to know. ‘Didn’t she inherit the house when her mother died?’ She found it difficult to fathom why any woman would prefer a cave or paddock to the sprawling grandeur of Blackness. She remembered the passage from Webweaver where Violet had scoffed about living in a draughty mausoleum – but there couldn’t be anything more draughty than a cave exposed to the ocean.
‘Yes, but she kept roaming the paddocks and sleeping outside. Gracie came to town on a buying spree and managed to pick up Blackness for a song. There were rumours she had thrown in a few sheep to clinch the deal. That one may look scatty but she’s as wily as they come! I can’t abide the woman, if you want my honest opinion. Outsiders shouldn’t buy up nearly an entire town. It forces up the prices and the young people can’t afford to stay in their own village!’
‘I still don’t understand,’ Sadie said. ‘Violet was such a pampered and protected girl. Why would she choose to live like this?’
Birdie’s eyes glittered with an emotion Sadie couldn’t read. ‘Penance,’ she said.
There was a silence as Sadie wondered what she meant.
‘I have something for you,’ Birdie said. ‘Violet sent it to me shortly after we buried Pearl. I didn’t have any idea of what to do with it at the time. It’s a confession of sorts. When she was hurt in the fire I thought she’d been punished cruelly enough so I kept silent. I entrust it to you now. It’s a secret I’ve kept for a long time – I even kept it from Maxwell. You may decide to publish it and use it for your book. Perhaps enough time has passed that it may be safe to do so. Or you might decide to remain silent.’
Birdie went to her bookshelves and selected a large red family Bible. ‘This belonged to my poor mother. She went senile in the end. My greatest fear is that the same will happen to me. That’s why I want to tell you now. Just in case.’ She knocked on the wooden bookshelf as she spoke. ‘It’s the safest place to hide anything. Nobody thinks to open my Bible.’ Her eyes twinkled and for a second Sadie saw a glimpse of the young woman she had been. The woman who had longed for a more bohemian life than the one she was destined for in Pencubitt. The woman who had never left her native state but had cared for her elderly mother and then settled down with Maxwell.
Birdie extracted a small rose-pink envelope and passed it to Sadie. ‘Take it home and read it,’ she said.
Sadie stared at the address on the front: Birdie Pinkerton, Seagull Cottage, Pencubitt.
‘Did Violet kill Pearl?’ Sadie felt a tremor of emotion shoot through her body.
Birdie laughed. ‘Do you th
ink I would shield a murderess?’
Sadie placed the letter in her bag. ‘Do you know who did kill her?’
‘It’s best not to ponder on these things. The past can fool you with false memories and suspicions. I believe a stranger came to town and killed her and then left. I can’t conceive of it being anybody local. We all knew each other so well.’
Sadie remembered Simon’s warning at the barn dance to be careful who she trusted in Pencubitt, that not everyone is what they seem. ‘What about Maxwell?’
Birdie smiled as she reached for a biscuit. ‘My dear. If you think it was Maxwell, then you have to stop and ask yourself why the police couldn’t find any evidence of his guilt. He was one of their main suspects – along with myself, of course. Cream or plain?’
‘He did have a motive, however, didn’t he?’ Sadie persisted. ‘He was in love with you, and Pearl had pushed him to the limits. Nobody saw him on the beach.’
‘There was a witness,’ Birdie said. ‘He was never taken seriously.’
‘Even if he had left the house that morning, he could easily have returned by the secret tunnel, couldn’t he? Did the police ever find out about the tunnel?’
Birdie sighed. ‘Yes. He could have.’ She indicated Maxwell’s photograph on the bookcase. ‘He was kind, sensitive and loving. I know what he was and wasn’t capable of, and he wasn’t a killer. God knows Pearl could drive anybody to murder, but Maxwell? I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree there. And the police were as useless as breasts on a bull. Too busy arguing with each other over who should lead the investigation. They were so distracted with savouring all the juicy untruths about Pearl’s sexual activities, they wouldn’t have noticed a secret door had it been carved into their foreheads. Like you, they became convinced it was Maxwell – the thought of anything or anyone else wasn’t entertained for a second. Oh, they did get rather carried away pursuing the poor old Tin Lady. She’d been seen in town on the day in her horse and cart selling her knives, cake tins and dolly pegs. As if poor old Tin could’ve hurt a fly! Those policemen were fools! Biscuit?’
Poet's Cottage Page 25
