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THURSDAY 22nd DECEMBER

SIX DAYS BEFORE THE MURDER

THE CHILDREN WERE OUT early, calling across the moguls of mine spoil that lay at the head of Connell’s Gully. From high on his hill, David Rose heard the strain in their cries. He looked at the corpse stiffening at his feet, with dawn flies mopping blood from its breached scalp and drool from its grin. In one move, he stooped and pulled it by the tail across the red coals. Amid the reek and fizz of burning hair, he laid on wood. By the time the youngsters came up, the flames had concealed the carcase, and the crackling disguised the sizzling.

‘Morning to you,’ he said, herding them away from the pyre. ‘And a fine mornin’ it is to be out for a walk.’

The tallest, a girl in plaits and bonnet, spoke up.

‘I’m Anna Spinks. We’re looking for our dog. His name is Wombat. Have you seen him? He’s black, and he’s got a white nose.’

David Rose grimaced and pulled at his neck.

‘No, I can’t say I have, Miss Anna, but I’ll be sure to keep an eye out. Wombat, you say?’

Anna Spinks nodded. He shrugged his regret that he was unable to shed any light.

He raised a finger. ‘Would you like some sweets?’ he said, and darted into the tent. He returned, sweets like coloured jewels in a cupped hand. ‘For Christmas.’

The siblings looked to their sister. She nodded, and they moved forward to accept the offering.

GEORGE STUART LOVED TO feel Maggie’s fingers claw at his soft white arse.

‘Squeeze,’ he breathed, and with voice, ‘Squeeze, my love!’ He loved to watch his wife of five weeks staring up at him like a child. God, was she pretty. Seventeen, and so lovely. And his! Thighs slapped, and the bed creaked and juddered on the boards. Maggie whimpered, George grunted. And then he was done, and sagged over her, blowing like a mill horse while she held his thick, sweaty neck and gazed vacantly at the blowfly bouncing across the ceiling. Days had often begun like this since they’d wed; and then he’d be gone to start the eight-hour shift at the New Wombat mine.

George pulled up his trousers, and sat on the bed to lace his boots.

‘You’ll mend those socks, won’t you, love? And there’s that shirt.’

She nodded and stood to dress.

‘And love, I’m nearly out of tobacco, so when you’re in town, you could stop by Kreckler’s. He’ll be closed over Christmas.’

Maggie had no plans for town, but she did have to shop, today or tomorrow. Flour was low, and the stores’d be closed Sunday through to Tuesday for the Christmas holiday. Yes, she would shop today.

George had moved through to the other room. Maggie heard him open the tin that sat in a recess above the mantelpiece. Coins shuffled and slid within. She heard him scrabble among them and place a few on the table, and the tin being returned.

‘On the table,’ he called.

She came out.

George was at the door. ‘Don’t forget my tobacco, now.’

‘I won’t.’

He smiled at her and was gone. And then he was back, darting for the top of the meat safe.

‘Left me bloody pipe, would you believe!’ he said, retrieving it from between dishes and cups stacked there, and leaving with it between his teeth.

DAVID ROSE POKED A stick at the charred dog, at the unlipped teeth gleaming from a skull sheathed tight in burnt flesh. A scrape of a boot, and the grin was banished under ash. He took out a clay pipe, loaded it from a pouch, and lit up from a stick of burning bark. It was a good spot he’d found for himself, all right; there on the edge of town, a pair of gum trees close together to sling the rope for his tent, a stump for a seat and table, and a fine westerly view. He looked at that view now, out over the diggings and on to the dull forest fading into summer haze. He could watch people come and go along Albert Street; women with shopping, men with tools, children with each other. There was a small house — bark roof, weatherboards, two windows — not a hundred yards away, that enjoyed the same view to the west. He’d gone by that house several times these past weeks on his way to town, for food and for the fortnight of work he’d had at Hathaway’s blacksmith and livery stables. He’d seen a young woman come out of that house. Her hair was a dark reddish-brown, and framed a face that had not a single line. He’d once had a woman of his own, but she was a withered leaf to this pretty petal. What was her name? he’d wondered. Did she live in that house? Was she in need of a husband? Such a one ought not be without a husband.

VINCENT STREET WAS WIDE and busy, as the commercial centre of a town of three thousand would be. Albert Street brought Maggie Stuart to its bustling midpoint at the Prince of Wales Hotel corner around two. There the summer air was abruptly pungent with dung and dust, and noisy with voice and vehicle.

She began up the street, for Mills’ family grocery, negotiating a way among wide skirts, hat brims, and wicker baskets, all constricting the available space, at a premium two days shy of Christmas. From the stream came a hand. It grasped Maggie’s forearm and pulled her round to a halt.

‘Maggie my dear, heavens, aren’t you keeping well!’ said an abundant woman of disciplined hair and unruly dentition.

‘Thank you, yes, Mrs Homberg, I am keeping very well.’

‘Marriage must agree with you then. But it is only six weeks, mind!’

Maggie blushed.

‘Oh, take no notice of me. But look, my dear, if ever you’d fancy to come back to the Argus, you know you’ll always be welcomed with our open arms. Mr Homberg still says you’re the best waitress outside Melbourne.’ She squeezed Maggie’s arm and leaned in to add, ‘And the prettiest!’

DAVID ROSE HAD ARRIVED at the Prince of Wales Hotel at one-thirty, just before the free counter lunches closed. He’d paid his threepence for a pint, in case his entitlement was questioned by the painted lady behind the bar. Rouge and powder may have masked the pocks, but did nothing to hide her wrinkle-nosed disdain for the man before her, with his thick black curls, his beard with the strange shaved gap below his large nose, and the teeth that jutted over his lower lip. Yet she took his order for vegetable soup and bread, and left him to settle in at a table by the window. And while he waited, he gazed out through grimy glass upon a scene of great animation; of drays, of women with baskets and children, of old men smoking and gesticulating, a Chinaman with his vegetable barrow, youths loafing, the well-dressed and ragged, young and old all drawn for whatever was their business to the throbbing and dusty heart of this booming town. And the thought came to him of just how far from Gloucestershire he was, yet how remote he felt from the world just outside this window —

There she was! The pretty woman from the house! He saw her, her hair worn up under her hat, the broad brim shading her lovely face from the glare and heat. She walked upright, with assured step, but he could see that there alone amid all the noise and dust and movement she was vulnerable, like a flower in a storm —

The Castlemaine coach burst into Vincent Street in a great snorting, pounding, and rattling. Dawdling pedestrians quickened their step as this juggernaut of horse, metal, wood, and leather touched down and slowed towards its point of disembarkation.

He swept his eyes along the footpath, but she was gone.

ALICE LATHAM WAS AT the counter when her daughter Maggie entered Mills’ store. The women each caught the other’s eye and smiled, as in the manner of acquaintances, though there was longing in the older one’s gaze. Her lower lip was swollen and split.

‘Hello, Maggie,’ she said. Her tone was tentative, as if in expectation of a snub. ‘I were thinkin’, if it’s all right, that maybe you an’ George might like to come over Saturday afternoon for tea? Seein’ as it’ll be Christmas Eve. The girls would love to see you; they’ve hardly seen you at all these past weeks.’

She waited, hopeful.

‘Thank you, ma, but George will be out.’

‘Oh —’

‘Will that be all for now, Mrs Latham?’ the shop assistant said.

Alice nodded a thank-you and paid. She continued as she loaded her basket from the counter.

‘You could always come on your own. And you do know I wouldn’t ask unless Joe were going to be out.’

The assistant had turned his attention to Maggie. She took the opportunity this afforded and avoided the question.

‘Four pound of flour, a half-pound of sugar, a half-pound of butter, a pound of dried apples, and four candles, thank you,’ she said. ‘And soap. I need soap. Though not quite as much as my husband does!’

She chuckled along with the man serving, as much to distract herself from all the awkwardness.

Alice was regarding her daughter. ‘It does warm my heart to see you happy, Maggie,’ she said. She waited, and walked with Maggie back out to the street, where they stood, the two still figures on a busy boardwalk. Alice placed a hand on Maggie’s arm, and had to wait till the clanging bell of the town crier and his bawling of some notice passed them by.

‘Please, love,’ she said. ‘For Christmas.’

Maggie looked at her mother. The fat lip was no surprise, and Maggie felt no longer obliged to enquire as to how she came by it, or of any other bruisings she might bear on any particular day.

‘My husband comes first, ma. You taught me that.’

Alice stiffened. ‘And rightly so, if you want a roof over your head, and food for your children.’

And to be safe, Maggie thought to say, but she knew the words would be lost on her mother.

‘I gave you my consent,’ Alice said, in the exasperated tone of it having been said a hundred times. ‘So’s you would be happy. You know that.’ She squeezed Maggie’s arm and offered a kindly face. Maggie’s was impassive. She felt sorry for her mother, blinded by fear and wifely obligation to Joe Latham. So help me, Maggie Latham, I swear I will cut your very throat if you defy me. That’s what he’d said, her own stepfather, not two months past. And this was no idle threat uttered in a moment of lapse. He’d bided his time, till they were alone in the house, and the menace was all the greater with a blade in his hand. Ma saw the evidence of his violence; in the bruises and welts, in the tears and frightened face of her daughter, but it was for the violence that left its stain on Maggie’s sheets — but could never be spoken of — that Alice gave her consent for her daughter to wed.