I can add a few more midlife superpowers to the ones in your column. Multi-tasking for starters, and of course having eyes in the back of our head. Then there’s the ability to find things that no-one else can. I bet even Superman occasionally flung stuff around the farmhouse while he yelled, ‘Mum, have you seen my blue tights?’
Deb’s house was some way out of town, a ranch-style with a wide veranda that ran all the way around and had a ramp down to the pathway. Perfect for children on tricycles or skateboards; I would never have been able to keep my lot inside. Amber had now been replaced by a surly young constable who clearly considered guarding middle-aged women a waste of his valuable time. He parked ostentatiously in Deb’s driveway and then remained in the police car, which was probably just as well.
Petra had barely touched the doorbell before Deb answered. She looked at me with concern as she ushered us inside. ‘Nell, you poor thing! That collar looks so uncomfortable! How are you feeling?’
‘Fine, fine,’ I replied shortly, a little weary of having my welfare questioned.
‘At least you don’t need to wear a scarf. And I’m not at all surprised. Not about them going so far, of course, but that it proves it’s all linked. I told you we’d have to be careful.’
‘Duly noted.’
Still talking, Deb led us into the lounge room. It was a large room with sparse but tasteful furnishings. A laptop was open on the coffee table, connected to a data projector that faced a portable screen set up by the far wall. There was also a glass platter with wedges of cheese, stuffed olives and water crackers. ‘I knew that note didn’t ring true! I mean, if someone like Ned Given went to the bother of writing a note, then he’d include more information. Besides, It’s beyond me? That sounds more like he was given a task he wasn’t up to! What would you like to drink?’
‘Whatever you have,’ replied Petra with more than her usual enthusiasm.
‘I’ll bring a choice. Grab a seat anywhere you like. Just wait till you see what Lew’s been up to. You’ll be flabbergasted!’ Deb beamed at us and then bustled out, obviously enjoying herself. I wondered if she entertained often. I lowered myself onto on the couch then shuffled along so that I could face the screen directly. The front doorbell rang again and I felt a frisson of expectation.
‘This is going to be like one of those home video slideshows,’ whispered Petra gloomily. ‘I’ve already sat through one today at the funeral.’
‘Well, if you’d had more success there, this one wouldn’t be necessary.’
‘I am sorry. Fancy not being able to pick a culprit out of the crowd. Not a single person with a sign saying I did it.’ Petra dropped onto the couch and slumped her shoulders. ‘I can’t even drink much because I’m driving, and we have one policeman in the driveway and another about to join us here. Thanks, Nell, I owe you one.’
‘Well, perhaps you can spill another of my secrets. Would that help?’
Petra was saved from answering by Deb, who re-entered the room in conversation with Ashley Armistead. I turned stiffly, just in time to see them followed by a man in a wheelchair. He was a blond giant, even seated, with a florid complexion, but the thinness of his legs spoke to his having been in the chair for some time. The ramp to the veranda and the sparse furniture suddenly made sense.
‘Petra, Nell, this is my husband Lew. And of course you already know Ashley. Lew, these are our fellow investigators.’
‘So we finally meet!’ Lew rolled over to shake our hands and then spun a wheel and swivelled, deftly positioning himself beside the coffee table. ‘Wonderful! Now, just to save on the preliminaries. Car accident, over twenty years ago, so it’s ancient history. T9 spinal-cord injury. That’s complete paralysis of the lower body. Don’t drink and drive.’ He wagged a finger at Petra, as if she needed specific reminding. ‘But I was bloody lucky compared with some, so there you go. Now, you’re gonna be pretty pleased with what I’ve turned up.’
‘I’m sure we will,’ said Petra, glancing at me sideways.
‘Thanks again for having me on such short notice,’ said Ashley.
I adjusted my position so that I could see him fully, hoping to catch his eye and send a nonchalant smile that would belie the buoyancy of my stomach. But he was listening intently as Lew detailed the flaws in police speed-camera methodology. There was something similar about the two men, I decided, even though they did not look at all alike; integrity, perhaps, or a certain honesty. Despite only just having met Lew, however, I suspected his was more exposed than Ashley’s. An image of last Wednesday morning clicked behind my eyes, like a viewfinder, roundly disproving my hypothesis. I flushed.
Deb returned from the kitchen with two bottles of wine, one red and one white, a largesse that seemed a little inappropriate given her husband’s recent warning. She passed the bottles to him and went to a crystal cabinet for goblets. Between them they took orders, filled glasses, passed around the platter.
‘Okay then,’ said Lew impatiently, waving his wife to a seat. ‘That’s enough of that. Let’s get to business!’ He turned to face Ashley. ‘I take it you’ve been given the background?’
‘Absolutely. Nell has been most forthcoming.’
‘Yes,’ said Petra, leaning back and crossing her legs. ‘She often is.’
‘Excellent!’ Lew flicked a switch on the data projector and with a low hum, the screen gradually filled with the now familiar photo of Petar Majic and Mate Dragovic with dog. He hefted the laptop onto his knees and then turned back to us. ‘D’you know, when Deb first asked me to do this I was bit peeved. She’s always coming up with stuff for me. But I’ve had a bloody good time. Fascinating history here.’
Deb gave her husband a smug look. ‘Told you so.’
‘And right as usual.’ He winked at her and then slapped his hands together, the laptop wobbling precariously. ‘Okay then. I started off by confirming the information we had; no point building anything on sand. But I’m gonna update you chronologically, rather than in the order that information was revealed. Easier to follow. So, for starters –’ he jabbed a button on the laptop and the screen changed to a map of Eastern Europe ‘– Petar Majic was born in 1829 in Kerch, a major trade port in the Ukraine. Mother died when he was a baby, father drowned when he was six. After that he seems to have been taken in by a local family, the Dragovics.’ He turned to give us a grin before continuing. ‘I’m guessing they were some type of kin. The Dragovics had a mass of kids so they probably didn’t even notice one extra. Although times would have been tough. He and Mate Dragovic went off to sea together as teenagers and returned in 1852. We next see them signed up as ship’s hands on the Weidemann, which docked in Melbourne on 19 March 1855. The Crimean War was in full swing by then, which may have been one reason they left the Ukraine again.’
‘I wonder if they already knew about the gold rush,’ I said, watching as Lew replaced the smaller map with one that showed the ship’s long journey. ‘Or whether they heard about it when they docked.’
‘Hard to know. Next time their names crop up is on a claim at Bendigo Creek.’
‘And Kata?’ asked Petra. ‘Where does she come in?’
‘Ah yes, young Kata. We’ll get to her in a moment.’ Lew was clearly enjoying himself. He scrolled back to the picture of the two men. ‘So we have our two young adventurers off prospecting and, against all odds, hitting paydirt in 1856 – partly because they didn’t subscribe to the popular belief that gold diminished at depth. And did they ever strike it rich. Eventually sold up for forty thousand pounds, which was a shitload of money then.’
Ashley whistled. ‘Not counting the gold they would have extracted in the meantime.’
‘Yep, they were rich men when that was taken.’ Lew inclined his head towards the screen and then scrolled forward once more, until he reached the portrait I had last seen on the display boards at Sheridan House. ‘Which brings us to the lovely Kata. I’d a bit of a head start here, thanks to Nell, but tracking her was still a job in itself. I knew where she’d come from and where she’d finished, but just couldn’t join the bloody dots. That is, not until I stopped searching for Kata Dragovic.’ He paused. ‘And started looking for Kata Majic.’
If it wasn’t for my collar I would have gaped, but fortunately my chin was jammed in place. ‘Kata Majic? You mean …’
Still grinning, Lew hit enter on the laptop and Kata’s photo was replaced by her wedding certificate. It was quite ornate, with whirling scrolls and beautiful copperplate writing. ‘Yep. The sister married the brother’s best friend in 1853. They had a child too, a boy named Petar, but he died in 1855, probably when Kerch was razed by the British.’
Deb chimed in. ‘My theory is that he left to make some money for his growing family.’
‘We also reckon he fully intended to return,’ added Lew. ‘But the gold rush must have seemed like too good an opportunity. Besides, Kerch was a mess after the war. Still, it seems that she was pretty resistant to emigrating, despite everything. Or maybe there were elderly relatives to care for. Anyway, she didn’t arrive till 1862, when the house at Majic was being built. She would’ve been one of the first to catch the train from Melbourne to Bendigo, because the line was only opened in October that year.’
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 paperwork 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.