Sister Kathleen, spellbound by my stories, often found it hard to end the meetings when she knew she had to go back to her chores. It had taken many weeks for me to tell her my story because of the little time available. The story would soon be over, but Sister Kathleen was eager to listen to any new snippets I could recall.
‘So you were free, Mary, and you eventually went back to Towitta. What was that like?’
Yes I was free. After a few months in Eden Valley I went back to Towitta a free woman, but I knew some of the people in Towitta and Sedan viewed me as a murderess. Although I was found not guilty the case remained unsolved, so I was still viewed as notorious and someone to be feared. No one told me to my face, but things were different for me. In town I’d feel the eyes on me when I climbed down from the wagon. The locals would slink back to let me pass or grab hold of their children’s hands as I entered the bakery or post office. Some children even ran screaming when they saw me. Groups of locals whispered to each other as I approached. I heard, ‘Mama, is she really the Noon Lady?’ as I passed. ‘Shhh,’ said her mother, with a finger to her lips. The local children called me ‘Noon Lady’ after the Wendish witch known in folklore for harming infants and children. This hurt me sorely for I was fond of children. In Wendish folklore witches were born with a single tooth and I wondered how many people knew that I had been born with one too. This strange fact would not have helped my reputation. Miserable, I left the town gossip and returned to the farm.
Mother had aged and went about her chores in misery and silence, and brothers Willy and August crept around and whispered to each other. Father, ever tyrannical, put the fear of God into the two boys who leapt to their jobs at speeds never seen before, so afraid were they at what could happen next. Who could they trust now? Although the brothers slept away from the farmhouse in the barn, they were nevertheless anxious about whether the stranger might return to murder them one night. I could never reassure them on this matter; he was, after all, still at large, wasn’t he?
Father lost all interest in finishing the new house, and he still had the problem of no spare money. There were only five of us now, and the boys didn’t like to come inside the house any more than was necessary. The new house was three feet high, but there it remained, unfinished. A testament to shattered dreams and a family destroyed.
Mother was angry with Father, Father was angry with everyone, and I was angry with Gustave, my sweetheart, who I never saw again.
About nine months after Bertha’s death my older brothers Frederick and Heinrich came for Willy and August and took them north to work on a cattle station with them and changed their name so as not to be tainted by the Schippan name. Father kicked up hell when Frederick and Heinrich came for the boys in a horse and wagon because it meant he had no one to labour on his farm and would have to sell up. But they came well armed and there was nothing Father could do to stop them. Needless to say, Mother wailed a lot. I tried to comfort her while I helped the boys gather their possessions and made a hamper of food for them to take on the long journey north. I knew it was their one chance to escape.
A year or so after the boys left we moved from Towitta to Light’s Pass, just north of Angaston, and our farm was bought by a neighbouring farmer. The farmhouse soon fell into ruins after the thatch was blown away in a storm. Now there is only the chimney breast remaining; you could pass the site of our farm in the middle of a vast flat wheatfield and never know it was there.
Mother always believed in my innocence, but it was a different matter with Father. We both thought we knew each other’s secrets. I remembered all that business with the suspicious deaths of the two hawkers; I knew how dangerous he was.