The Ink Stain

by Tom Keneally

  ‘Perhaps he was trying to be,’ said Mrs Mulrooney.

  ‘Well, someone may have thought so. The newsroom was looted. Might just have been thieves. Everyone knows by now that the Chronicle has closed. But …’

  ‘But if you were a thief, would you risk hanging to rob a newspaper? Not known for their riches, are they?’

  ‘Quite. Whereas if you’re looking for a story, and can’t find it in the man’s gaol cell – well, who knows. Hopefully there’s something left to discover at the gaol. When the protests die down.’

  ‘You’re not telling me you’re afraid of wading through some protesters!’

  ‘No, I simply don’t wish to carry out my enquiries under the gaze of several dozen of the colony’s more outspoken residents.’

  ‘They’ll be too busy screaming at the gaol walls to notice you. And if you show up at the prison gates in the middle of a protest, the guards will probably be too distracted to keep a close eye on you while you’re there.’

  ‘Hm. Worth considering. In the meantime, I was hoping to ask you a favour. Tomorrow, could you commandeer the kitchen for the purposes of shortbread? There’s a young lad who looks as though he could use some – and he just may have some information for us. And have a word to Mr Cullen. It would be useful to find out more about the first story Hallward was arrested for – Mobbs mentioned some soldiers whose treatment seems to have enraged Hallward.’

  ‘Mr Monsarrat, I can honestly say I’d like nothing better – any day on which I can bake shortbread and ask questions is a grand day indeed.’

  ‘I’m surprised, actually, that you’re still wearing your respectable clothes.’

  Mrs Mulrooney straightened, her nostrils flaring as her eyebrows knitted together. ‘My usual clothes are perfectly respectable!’

  ‘Of course, yes, I didn’t mean – simply that your usual clothes, much as you love them, would have been unlikely to get you invited to the races by Henrietta Duchamp. But this evening I’m surprised to see you’re still in your … armour, as it were.’

  ‘Well, I thought I’d better stay in costume for a little while longer. Because you and I, Mr Monsarrat, are going to a concert.’

  Chapter 6

  There were few frilled parasols at the recital hall, a low-ceilinged place, respectable but not opulent. The men and the few women who accompanied them were generally dressed in plain clothes of reasonable quality. For the first time since Monsarrat had arrived in Sydney, he felt he could pass unnoticed, while Mrs Mulrooney’s brooch was by far the most extravagant item in the room.

  There was no lobby. People milled around the hall, weaving between rows of chairs, greeting friends or calling out good-natured insults. They all quietened down, their chatter ebbing, when a man – tall, thin, simply dressed but still with the silver horseshoe gleaming against his black cravat – stepped up to the podium that stood before the red velvet stage curtains and used his spectacles to rap the lectern. The sound couldn’t have travelled more than a few feet, but many of those present had half an eye on him already. He was, it seemed, one to be given silence on demand. His eyes covered the crowd, fixing now and then on a miscreant who coughed or whispered to their neighbour. It was the same stare which had fixed on Monsarrat at yesterday’s garden party.

  ‘I suggest,’ Albert Bancroft said, ‘that everyone takes their seats.’

  He was obeyed remarkably quickly, although the lack of a lobby, and therefore liquid refreshment, was perhaps making the audience biddable.

  ‘Now, I assume you have not come here to see me –’ Bancroft said.

  ‘So stop talking, Bertie!’ yelled someone from the crowd.

  Bancroft narrowed his eyes at the audience as though trying to identify the speaker, then cleared his throat. ‘In that case, the Royal Colonial Music Appreciation Society presents Miss Carolina Albrecht with Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21.’ He paused, glaring at an unfortunate underling backstage as they jerkily opened the curtain. ‘James! Earn your position as deputy president.’

  When the sheets of red velvet finally parted, Carolina Albrecht stood with her hand on the piano, staring straight ahead. She did not react as the curtains revealed her, and Monsarrat had the impression she had been standing there for some time, listening to the irascible introduction.

  Monsarrat had heard strains from the piano as they drifted through the walls into Duchamp’s study during the garden party but had not seen her. Now, he had the uncomfortable sensation that she was staring at him, for all that her eyes were fixed on the back wall. Her gaze was vague but aggressive, a challenge to all comers to try to judge her and see how far they got. A familiar look. Grace O’Leary’s look.

  Clearly feeling that the back wall had been stared at enough, Carolina moved sedately to the piano stool and took her time settling herself, arranging her skirts and organising her sheet music as though she was alone in a rehearsal room. No one called to her to get on with it. Apart from the occasional clearing of a throat, the room was silent. Then Carolina lifted her fingers, slammed them down onto the keys and dived into the music, summoning strident notes and gentle phrases, and sending them out to weave around the audience.

  A hand squeezed Monsarrat’s, and when he looked to his side he saw that Mrs Mulrooney’s eyes were wet. ‘Do you know, Mr Monsarrat,’ she said after the noise of applause had died down, ‘that this is the first concert I have ever been to?’

  ‘Truly?’ said Monsarrat. He had, as a young man and a free one, attended such events when he could, and had also heard his share of bawdy tavern key-bashing.

  ‘When would I have had the opportunity?’ Mrs Mulrooney said. ‘We sang a lot, as I was growing up. There were fiddles sometimes, bodhrans, tin pipes. But for the past twenty years, all I’ve heard are laments or drunken songs about unmentionable goings-on.’

  ‘Well, when this is over, we must make up for it,’ he said. ‘Perhaps start a music society in Parramatta.’

  ‘Where I am sure you will open the curtains more smoothly than was done tonight. But for now, Mr Monsarrat, we have other business. I will go alone, if you’ve no objection. She strikes me as a bit of a fiery one. Best not give her the chance to eject us because there’s a strange man backstage.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say strange, but as you wish,’ he said. ‘I will be here talking to the musical society president – and hoping he doesn’t immediately try to get me assigned to one of his properties.’

  Bancroft was around the side of the stage, smoking a pipe and reading a copy of the Colonial Flyer. He stuffed it under his arm when Hannah cleared her throat. ‘I am sorry, madam,’ he said, ‘but this area is not open to the general public.’

  ‘Oh, but I so wanted to thank Miss Albrecht for her performance,’ Hannah said, coating her words with what she hoped was just enough wheedling.

  ‘I’m sure she’d appreciate a nice note.’

  ‘I’ve met her, you see, and I was rather hoping to renew the acquaintance.’

  ‘I believe Miss Albrecht has plenty of acquaintances as it is.’

  ‘Nonsense, Albert,’ said a clipped voice with a slight German accent. ‘One can never have too many friends.’ Carolina stepped from the shadows of the stage. She had changed from her blue gown into a rather severe grey travelling suit.

  ‘As you wish,’ Bancroft said. ‘I’ve far better things to do than engage in a debate on the social affairs of women.’ He tossed the newspaper aside and stalked away.

  ‘Ah,’ Carolina said as she got closer to Hannah, ‘you’re Henrietta’s new friend.’

  ‘Now, I wouldn’t put it like that,’ said Hannah. ‘Given that I’ve known her the same length of time as I’ve known you.’

  ‘Really? From the way she was cosseting you, I thought you were her maiden aunt.’

  ‘No. I just found myself conscripted to a garden party while my … nephew did some business with Colonel Duchamp.’

  ‘I see. Well, while I generally welcome new friends, I prefer not to draw them from
the Duchamp circle, so if you’ll excuse me …’ She started to walk away.

  Hannah realised any claim that she wasn’t part of Henrietta’s coterie would be disbelieved. ‘I was hoping to talk to you about Henry Hallward,’ she called out.

  Carolina slowly turned back. ‘What have you to say about him?’

  ‘I simply wanted to know what he was like. I was a reader of the Chronicle.’

  ‘If you were a regular reader, you know very well what he was like. I have no time for curiosity hunters. Goodnight, madam.’

  She started to turn again, so Hannah decided to try honesty. ‘My … my nephew is investigating his death. We are concerned about certain things – missing stories, incomplete evidence. If you wish to see his killer punished, you could do worse than to talk to me.’

  Carolina paused, looked at Hannah, then turned again and walked away.

  Hannah sighed. It was one thing to take a calculated risk in revealing Mr Monsarrat’s role – another to do so without gaining any advantage.

  Then Carolina stopped again. ‘Madam, I have had a long night of performing. If you wish to talk to me, I suggest you hurry up and follow.’

  There had been some chitchat, little knots of people asking about each other’s children or health, but the hall had emptied fairly quickly and the candles in the sconces were beginning to burn low. It was getting too dim to read Hallward’s obituary.

  Monsarrat had found the piece in a copy of the Colonial Flyer left on a seat. He didn’t know whether Mobbs had written it. Whoever had, though, was trying to walk a very fine line between dismissiveness and respect.

  Mr Hallward founded one of the pre-eminent organs of information in this city. His focus on the public good is to be applauded; however, at times his commitment to truth could veer from the path of sober-minded analysis into zealotry.

  As Monsarrat folded the newspaper and replaced it on the seat, he noticed the edge of a piece of paper sticking out between the newsprint sheets. He extracted it, to be greeted with the headline ‘Sinister Forces at Work’.

  Footsteps – he shoved the pamphlet back into the paper, opened it at a random page and pretended to read; sometimes it was best to feign ignorance.

  ‘Mr Monsarrat. I don’t usually expect to find musical sensibility in, well, someone like you. I suggest you read somewhere with better light.’

  Monsarrat did look up then, to see the tall musical society president – upbraider of audiences and attender of garden parties. ‘And I would be delighted to take your advice, sir. However, I am waiting for my aunt. I believe she has gone to pay her respects to Miss Albrecht.’

  ‘Respects are all very well,’ said Bancroft, ‘but I could have sworn I heard her ask about that slain newspaper editor.’

  ‘That wouldn’t surprise me – she’s always been interested in current events.’

  ‘I was given to understand you were the investigator, yet you are letting a woman do your work. In any case, one person’s current event is another’s tragedy. Mr Hallward and Miss Albrecht were close friends. It would be unfortunate to upset her. Another performance tomorrow night, you see. For which she has already been paid.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure the last thing my aunt would want to do is cause upset. And Miss Albrecht strikes me as the type of woman who is perfectly capable of ending a distressing conversation.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘I must admit,’ said Monsarrat, ‘I found Miss Albrecht’s performance delightful.’

  ‘Ah, that’s right,’ said Bancroft. ‘Duchamp said you had a certain degree of education. Not enough to keep you out of the hold of a prison ship. Parramatta, was it? I have a property between here and there.’

  ‘A pastoralist. The colony has been good to you, then.’

  ‘Better than the mother country. I would have been lucky to own a smallholding there. Here, I run properties almost as large as my childhood village.’

  ‘The governor must be generous.’

  ‘The governor is canny,’ said Bancroft. ‘All this land, and all needs farming. He gives it to those who have the mettle.’

  ‘Ah. I was reading Hallward’s obituary just then, and I seem to recall a few of his pieces attacking pastoralists over, let’s see – the treatment of convicts, was it?’

  ‘You were an admirer of the man, of course,’ said Bancroft.

  ‘Not necessarily. I read widely to stay informed.’

  ‘The kind of information Hallward traded in wasn’t worthy of the name.’

  ‘I understand you’re not the only one of that view,’ Monsarrat said. ‘Tell me, do you believe that any of those who share your opinion of Hallward could have taken action to, shall we say, address the problem permanently?’

  ‘Certainly not! What a suggestion.’

  ‘I simply ask what others are asking.’

  ‘Others should mind themselves, then,’ said Bancroft. ‘I must go, but I seek your assurance as a gentleman that you will extract your aunt if the conversation continues beyond the next ten minutes. I do not wish to tire such a pianist.’

  Monsarrat nodded, hoping that his lack of a verbal promise would mask his lack of an intention to keep it.

  ‘I knew this would happen,’ said Carolina, as she poured sherry for Hannah from a crystal decanter on her dressing table. She nestled the decanter back between brushes and rouged pieces of cloth and pots of mysterious ointments. ‘People with Henry’s honesty don’t generally live to old age.’

  ‘You believe he was killed for his views, then?’ Hannah asked. She raised the glass to her lips and lowered it again – a trick she used to make others believe she was imbibing with them. It was the closest she had ever been to sherry. Rum, of course, smelled atrocious, like the brawler’s drink it was. She had not expected sherry, in all its gentility, to smell equally bad in its own, cloying way.

  ‘Yes, why not? After what the governor was willing to do to those soldiers – imprisonment, torture to the point of death.’

  ‘Ah, the soldiers,’ said Hannah. ‘What can you tell me of them?’

  ‘Nothing Henry hasn’t already written.’

  ‘Henry, you say. You must have been fond of him.’

  Carolina turned away, but not before Hannah noticed her lips suddenly pressing together.

  ‘There is no shame in loving a man,’ Hannah said quietly.

  Carolina’s head whipped back around. ‘Of course not!’ she snapped. ‘Nor is there any shame in keeping your counsel about what form that love takes, even when half of Sydney is gossiping about it. Many loved him, in one way or another. For who he was, what he wrote. And just as many hated him.’

  ‘Do you mean Colonel Duchamp?’

  ‘Oh, it went higher than that. The governor did such disgraceful things to his own troops,’ Carolina said, ‘so why should he scruple at silencing Henry?’

  ‘Wait. You believe the governor killed him?’

  ‘Had him killed. Clearly didn’t fire the shot himself.’

  ‘Darling didn’t like what Hallward wrote, but having him killed? He could have sent him to a penal colony for hard labour.’

  ‘Where Henry would have found a way to write, and a way to get his writings back to Sydney. In suffering for his honesty, he would have been more powerful than ever. Is the governor’s culpability so inconceivable? Or are you afraid that it might be true?’

  Hannah pretended to sip at her sherry. She did not want to answer.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Carolina, ‘this is about more than criticism.’ She moved again to her dressing table and began to rub cream into her face. She said nothing for a moment. Hannah did not know whether Carolina was trying to increase the weight of her statement by making Hannah wait for it, but it irritated her. Words were too precious to play games with.

  ‘You might as well tell me,’ she said. ‘The sooner you do, the sooner I can leave you to your face cream.’

  Carolina stopped massaging her face and sighed, perhaps disappointed she had been prevented from pla
ying the scene to its maximum effect. ‘Henry was working on a story. Something out of the ordinary, even for him. He said the tremors it would cause would be felt in Whitehall. And that it would make the governor’s term the shortest in history. Now tell me, do you think that’s worth killing for?’

  ‘Then where is it?’ Monsarrat asked Mrs Mulrooney, as they walked away from the theatre, using the full moon’s light to avoid the worst of the ruts in the road. ‘It doesn’t surprise me that he was working on something – apparently he relished writing from prison. Crowdy did see papers on the table in Hallward’s cell, but he said that later they were gone.’

  ‘And you believe him?’ asked Mrs Mulrooney. She skipped to avoid an uneven section of pavement that had only just made itself apparent under a street lamp, and cursed in a most unladylike way. ‘These shoes, Mr Monsarrat. Silly little heels. If they were tall enough to help me reach a high shelf, I could forgive them. But all they seem intent on doing is giving me bunions and sending me flat on my face.’

  ‘Your fortitude is appreciated, I can assure you,’ said Monsarrat. ‘And no, I’m not sure I do believe him. But I can’t ask the other warden – apparently he’s gone to visit his sister out west.’

  ‘An odd time to do that, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes. You’re right. I’ll need to go to the gaol again.’

  ‘I daresay you will, while I attend the races with Miss Duchamp. Of course, we must also find out what happened to those soldiers – Carolina mentioned them too. I’d wager the key lies in the story Henry Hallward was working on when he was shot. From what you’ve told me, there may be a place where we can get answers to both questions at once.’

  Chapter 7

  Hannah knew what people like Henrietta told themselves about their status as Sydney’s social leaders – that they were among the exalted of the world. The equal to their counterparts in London. This was a necessary delusion, allowing them to explain what they were doing down here. The short coach ride east to the racetrack would surely have been uncomfortable for these people, had they any honesty. If they had looked out their coach windows, the view would have proved to them that they were paragons only compared to the world’s most wretched.