Chapter 10

Cullen wiped the crumbs from his mouth and smiled at Hannah.

That face, she thought, had spent time under Irish rain as well as colonial sun. It had probably been doing so for about the same amount of time as Hannah’s own. It was guarded, but not pinched or cruel; handsome in its craggy way.

Cullen had taken care to spread some old newsprint over Hallward’s desk, catching any crumbs. In a place where cupboard doors had been wrenched off their hinges and broken window glass lurked in the corners, such a gesture might have seemed futile to others, but Hannah saw it as a brave last stand against encroaching chaos.

‘Why do you stay here?’ she said. ‘Why not leave this place to crumble, now no one has a use for it?’

‘It is all that’s left of Henry Hallward, and without him there’d be nothing left of me,’ Cullen said, wiping his mouth.

‘What did he save you from?’

‘Road gang. Before my ticket came through. We’d come out from the barracks, on our way to repair some road or other. He was passing by, and he said, without a word of a lie, “Good morning, gentlemen.”’

‘I imagine those on a road gang aren’t used to that kind of greeting.’

‘Most of ’em assumed he was talking to the overseer. They knew, by that point, to keep their eyes down. But I always thought if you’re looking at the ground you might as well be in it, so I said good morning back. He smiled and tipped his hat to me. It was worth being hit by the overseer later.’

Hannah nodded. There were two types of convicts who survived the road gangs. The ones who gave up their humanity and became brutes, and the ones who held on to the belief that they were more than animals, even when all evidence suggested otherwise.

‘I hope the beating was worth it,’ she said.

‘The acknowledgement that you are still a soul, still worthy of a good morning? Worth ten beatings. Then he came and found me, in the convict barracks. Said he needed a convict special, for lifting and fetching and carrying and so on. When he found out I had my letters, that he could dictate stories to me, he was delighted. I came here with him that afternoon. And I don’t mind if you report on this conversation to Colonel Duchamp.’

‘If he wanted something with you, surely he’d have sent soldiers rather than shortbread.’

‘I don’t know how the man thinks,’ said Cullen. ‘But I’m inclined to believe you’re not in league with him.’

‘I’m in league with the fellow who visited you yesterday. Mr Monsarrat.’

‘Who’s trying to wrap Mr Hallward’s death up in a neat little bow.’

‘Who’s trying to find out what happened. And who noticed your little friend yesterday. Why is the boy taking such pains not to be seen?’

‘You’d have to ask him.’

‘I’d like to.’

Cullen shook his head. ‘He’s long gone, missus. Won’t be back until tomorrow at least.’

‘Who is he?’

‘That’s not for me to say.’

Hannah was convinced that talking to the boy was important. It would have to wait, though – Cullen wasn’t about to rush out and get him.

‘I wonder,’ she said, ‘if you could tell me something else. I keep hearing mention of some soldiers. Some sort of story that got Mr Hallward into trouble. Do you know anything about it?’

‘Ah, now that,’ said Cullen, ‘I can help you with.’ He fetched a paper from the rack and laid it on the desk, pulled Hallward’s chair out and gestured for Hannah to sit.

‘I’ve rarely seen him so angry,’ Cullen said. ‘And he was a man given to bursts of rage. Some of them directed at me, and for no good reason.

‘I brought him the mail that morning as normal. There had been a lad at the door, with a note. Folded up, nothing on the outside – nothing unusual, Mr Hallward had informers all over the town, one or the other of them would send him snippets of gossip almost every day. When he read this, though, well!’

‘It set him off?’ asked Hannah.

‘He jumped up, pushed his chair over and grabbed me by the neckerchief. Frightened me, I’ll be honest. I thought someone had accused me of something.’

‘And had they?’

‘As it turns out no, thanks be to God. He yelled then. “He’s dead, Cullen! Killed by the King himself, or his profane excuse for a representative.” He was always referring to the governor like that, you see, missus. I always made a mental note – no one was as good at insults as he was.’

‘But who had died?’

‘A soldier. A Private Hogg.’

‘And murdered by the governor?’

‘Mr Hallward liked to exaggerate. But truly, missus, he might as well have been. This place. It makes animals of us. Soldiers, convicts. Doesn’t matter. They drain our souls, then feel justified in destroying our bodies.’

He turned to Hannah, blinked a few times. ‘Private Hogg and his friend, Private Johnson. Word was they were sick of seeing convicts succeed. People who had come here not to serve their country but to pay for their crime. But neither of those lads were able to leave the army. So they stole a cloak. Their thinking was, get themselves arrested, do their time, and then they’d be at liberty to make their fortune.’

‘Seems an odd way to go about it,’ Hannah said.

‘Best way to get the army to release them,’ said Cullen. ‘Some convicts, well, they’ve become rich beyond what a private soldier could ever expect. And they have liberty to go into trade, to increase their wealth, while all a soldier can expect is to be paid whatever His Majesty thinks he’s worth until he dies or is no longer up for the job. It would amaze you, missus, the wealth of some of those who came here as convicts.’

‘I’m sure it would. You think they were justified in their theft?’

‘I can understand it,’ said Cullen.

‘But why did one of them end up dead?’

‘Well, as Mr Hallward said, it was the governor. He viewed the deliberate commission of a crime by a soldier as treason and was determined to stamp it out. Hogg and Johnson were unfortunate enough to commit their crime shortly after Darling arrived. Hogg – he wasn’t well at the time. It would have been fine if he’d just been put on a road gang somewhere, but the governor changed their punishment – he had heavy chains specially made for them. They stumbled around under the blazing sun on the road gang. And for Hogg, it was just too much. He didn’t last a week.’

‘Did the governor relent?’

‘Him? No, he made Johnson wear Hogg’s chains as well as his own. Only rescinded the order last week. I would like to think Mr Hallward had a hand in that.’

‘And that’s why he was in gaol, your Mr Hallward?’

‘One of the stories got him arrested, yes. He said the governor’s actions were illegal. The governor was a murderer. I think if he hadn’t been arrested, he would have been disappointed. The constables came the morning this was published. Mr Hallward just stood up and went with them, without even asking their business. They didn’t try to restrain him. They’d all done that dance before.’

Cullen tapped the paper he had laid in front of Hannah earlier.

It was a copy of the Sydney Chronicle, with a long story underneath the headline ‘The Governor’s Tyranny’. The first paragraph read: ‘It is a sad duty of this journal to inform the residents of this colony that they live not as subjects of the King, but as serfs of a dictator.’

‘Did Gerald Mobbs criticise the governor?’ asked Hannah.

Cullen went back to the pigeon holes, extracted a newspaper and silently handed it to Hannah. This one bore the masthead of the Colonial Flyer. Mobbs had written:

None of us wishes death on anyone, and the death of Private Hogg is a great pity. But those whose shrill voices are raised in cries of ‘murder’ should instead be thanking the governor. For it is he who, in making this difficult choice, has ensured no other young men will follow a similar path, and one which might end in their grave.

Those who thunder that the governor’s actions were illegal know better – a crime was committed, and it was punished to the fullest extent. There are many in this colony who would understand nothing less.

Hannah was tempted to shred the paper with its sanctimonious defence of torture. Instead she handed it back to Cullen. ‘And do you think the governor’s a murderer?’

‘I’ve lived under the British yoke. I expect them to treat me like cattle. But when they do that to their own soldiers, how much worse will they do to us?’

Hannah felt a fullness behind her eyes. ‘Oh, they are capable of far worse,’ she said. ‘I have seen it. In Enniscorthy, on Vinegar Hill. At the front door of my father’s house.’

Cullen looked at her and slowly nodded. ‘Erin go bragh.’

‘Erin go bragh,’ she repeated quietly.

He patted her hand. ‘Come along then, missus. I shouldn’t keep you all to myself.’

Monsarrat had seen yards like this before. He had seen people flogged in them, and hanged in them. He had a macabre habit of checking the flagstones for stains, and then talking himself out of believing they were some poor soul’s blood.

This yard, though, was a little different. It had the usual stains, high walls and oppressive air. It had two exits: the small door he had just walked through, which for some prisoners led to eternity; and a larger wooden gate, through which a cart could be brought to deliver fresh inmates, or take those already in residence to the judgement of the court. But it also had an audience: the blank windows of several surrounding houses had an excellent view over some parts of the yard.

‘Chancel!’ he called out.

Judging by the speed of the boy’s appearance, he had been waiting just out of sight.

‘Where was Hallward killed, exactly?’ Monsarrat asked.

‘Somewhere in this yard, sir.’

‘He was being loaded into the prison cart,’ said Monsarrat. ‘Where is it normally when receiving a prisoner?’

‘Generally right in the middle of the yard, sir.’

‘And Hallward would have been facing … where?’

‘I wouldn’t know, sir. I wasn’t there.’

‘Yes, yes, we’ve established that. But in the normal run of things.’

‘The cart would be brought in through that gate there,’ said Chancel, pointing across the yard. ‘So he would have walked up to it – well – this way.’

Chancel took a few steps towards the gate, and stopped.

‘No one found any musket balls, anything of that nature?’ asked Monsarrat. ‘It would help us determine what weapon the killer used.’

‘No, sir. Whatever killed him probably left the yard in his head.’

‘Thank you, Chancel. Oh, the prisoners have recently been afforded the luxury of a clean cell. So I hear, anyway.’

‘Well, we did have the place cleaned. It happens, from time to time.’

‘And can you remember the last time it happened?’

Chancel was silent.

Monsarrat sighed. ‘Very well. Thank you.’

Chancel nodded, scampered off.

Monsarrat paced towards the spot on which Chancel had been standing and looked down. He found himself on top of a large red-brown stain, the ebbing life of Henry Hallward consumed by the porous stone. He stepped back as if bitten.

As much to avoid looking down again as for any other reason, he looked up and found himself staring straight into the dark windows of a row of shuttered attics.

‘Never see anyone there,’ the woman said. ‘And I’m observant.’

The armchair Monsarrat had passed on the way into the house was testament to that. Well upholstered, like its owner, but leaking stuffing. The chair, once a deep red, was also faded from its placement in the sun near a window, from where its occupant could see the comings and goings on the street.

Monsarrat had nearly missed this house and its curious occupant. He had lost track of time, having resumed staring at the stain on the stones, wondering how deeply it seeped between the grains of compressed sand, when Chancel had come into the yard.

‘If you’ve all you need, sir?’ he asked, glancing nervously to the gaol door and no doubt thinking of the inmates behind it.

‘Yes. I think so. I may call on you again, Chancel, as the investigation unfolds.’

‘Yes, sir. With the colonel’s permission, of course.’

‘Chancel, the colonel brought me here. I think you can assume I have his permission.’

Mrs Selwyn must have seen Monsarrat leaving the gaol, because as soon as he was on the pavement, she was out on her front step, waving to him. As he approached, she called out, ‘Do you know anything?’

Monsarrat had a convict’s instinctive dislike of the overly curious. Still, when it came to an investigation, the curtain twitcher was a very useful species. This one had told Monsarrat about everyone in the surrounding houses. He’d heard more than he’d ever wanted to know about Mary Lennon’s well-deserved gout and Harold Smith’s fondness for drink.

There was only one house that so far Mrs Selwyn had failed to enlighten Monsarrat about: the tallest one visible from the gaol yard. One with an attic.

‘Odd,’ he said, ‘that it should just be sitting empty.’

‘Not as odd as all that,’ she said. ‘It belongs to a man who has a property in the west. He’s not always in Sydney and doesn’t often stay here when he is.’

Monsarrat was on his third cup of tea, and the distillation suffered greatly by comparison to Mrs Mulrooney’s brews.

Mrs Selwyn leaned forward, putting a hand over his. ‘Although – one hears things. A squeaking hinge, a creak. Ghosts, probably – you do see the occasional shape moving about in there, shadows on the drapes late at night. I don’t sleep as well as I once did, not since Mr Selwyn died.’ The pressure of her hand on his increased as she leaned further forward. ‘I’m a widow.’

Monsarrat cleared his throat, snatching his hand away with a vehemence he hoped wasn’t rude. ‘I am sorry for your loss, Mrs Selwyn. I’m very grateful to the tea, and your helpful information.’

The woman stood up, smoothing her skirts.

‘Oh, you wouldn’t happen to know the owner’s name?’ asked Monsarrat.

Mrs Selwyn scoffed, perhaps offended that anyone would think she could be ignorant of a neighbour’s name. ‘Bancroft. Albert, I think. Most unfriendly man, but I haven’t seen him for quite a time. Gave me a key, though I think I’ve lost it. Anyhow, he told me not to use it – unless the house was being burgled, in which case I should feel free to stop the thieves. Me! At my own risk!’ she said. ‘Mr Monsarrat, I would be delighted to assist you further … in any way you see fit.’

‘Exceptionally kind of you, but I’m sure it won’t be necessary.’ He backed towards the door, turning as he opened it and trying to avoid the impulse to sprint.

Cullen led Hannah through the newspaper office, past the frames – all but one of them smashed. A wooden press sat, hacked and useless, at one end of the room.

‘Odd that they left just one frame,’ she said.

He glanced towards the intact frame. ‘It was hidden in a drawer,’ he said. ‘I set it here to remind myself what this place is capable of.’

They walked to the back of the building, and Cullen opened a small door with rusted hinges. Hannah stepped into a yard that looked as though it hadn’t been maintained since it was built. Voracious weeds sprang through the cobblestones, and a pile of machinery rusted in one corner, next to a stack of broken printers’ plates. In another corner, an indistinct lumpen mound was covered by oddly clean canvas.

At the back of the yard was a wooden shed, haphazardly built from mismatched planks, held together with nails that weren’t driven all the way in. It did, however, have a door. A closed one.

Cullen made a crescent with his thumb and forefinger, and stuck it in his mouth. A sound like a bird call emerged – the kind of bird she had only ever heard in Ireland, one that did not exist here.

The door was slowly pushed open, its longer boards scraping on the dirt. A grimy face appeared, caught sight of Hannah, and disappeared again. She heard a scrabbling as the door was jerkily pulled closed.

‘It’s all right, lad,’ called Cullen. ‘She’s a friend.’

There was no response.

‘There is shortbread,’ Cullen called.

Still nothing.

‘Good shortbread. Happy to have it all to myself.’

The door slowly creaked open again. One grimy bare foot emerged, followed by another.

The boy was probably small for his age, although she couldn’t tell what age that was. He was dressed in clothes that might once have been decently made, but which were grimy and gaping at some of the seams. His face was narrow and dirty, his sunken eyes gleaming and darting, their brightness intensified by the drabness around them.

Hannah walked forward tentatively, holding out the tray of shortbread. The boy started to back away.

‘I’ll leave it here, then,’ she said, setting it on the ground. ‘I’ll step away, and I won’t move again until you’ve finished.’

As soon she was out of swatting range, the boy lunged forward and squatted at the tray, shoving squares of shortbread into his mouth with only a cursory effort to chew them.

Cullen was standing next to her at the entrance to the yard. ‘His name is Peter. Don’t know anything about his father. Mother was a convict. They took him away from her, put him in the orphan school. She was sent out west somewhere, some property or other, and never came back. When he escaped the orphan school they didn’t make any effort to reclaim him – they’ve got enough to worry about.’

‘How long has he been living here?’ asked Hannah.

‘Six months or so. He tried to steal Mr Hallward’s pocket watch. The boy thought he was being dragged to the constables but Mr Hallward brought him here, sat the lad at his desk. He was always asking people odd questions, out of nowhere, Mr Hallward was. And he asked this lad, “If you could say one thing to the governor, what would it be?”’

‘And Peter’s answer?’

‘“I am not a dog.”’

But you have nearly been reduced to one, you poor boy, thought Hannah. Eating scraps and living in a kennel.

‘Anyway,’ said Cullen, ‘Mr Hallward gave him a meal and sent him off, and the lad was back the next day. We arrived to find he’d broken in. He hadn’t taken anything, though – he was just staring at the printers’ plates, the blocks of type. So Mr Hallward asked him if he’d like to learn the trade, and he’s been here ever since.’

‘I can’t say much for Mr Hallward if he made the boy live in a shed and starve.’

‘Oh, he didn’t. Peter has a little bed in the attic. One in which he hasn’t slept since Mr Hallward died.’

It took only a few minutes for Peter to demolish the shortbread. He stayed crouched, looking at Hannah. She approached him slowly, and crouched herself until her eyes were level with his.

He flinched as though she was going to strike him.

‘You’ll have to forgive him,’ said Cullen. ‘Some soldiers tried to take him the other day – just lifted him right up, one by each arm. He struggled and eventually broke free, but not without a few little scrapes and a big scare.’

‘Soldiers! Why on earth? Who sent them?’

‘No idea, but soldiers tend to take their orders from the governor. Or his pet colonel.’

Hannah looked to the boy. ‘I’m not a soldier,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve no intention of taking you anywhere.’

‘Why are you here, then?’ he said. ‘You brought me something, that means you want something.’

What Hannah wanted in that moment was to reach out and smooth the boy’s cowlick from his forehead. She knew, though, that she would then lose him. He had spent most of his young life in a world where violence or bribery were the only two possible interactions.

She realised, too, that he was right about her: the shortbread was a form of inducement. ‘My friend and I – he was here yesterday, you might have seen him.’

‘The thin man,’ said Peter.

Hannah smiled. ‘Yes, well, he and I, we are trying to find out what befell Mr Hallward. And we’re wondering if you can tell us anything that might help.’

‘Why would you wonder that?’ said Peter.

‘You do have a habit of running away. It makes me think there’s something you want to avoid talking about. And I’m assuming that your friend brought me out to this yard for a good reason.’ She turned around and pierced Cullen with a questioning look.

‘I might not have been as forthcoming as I could have been with your friend yesterday, missus,’ said Cullen. ‘Without Mr Hallward, though, I must look to myself. There is no one to protect me now if I were accused of treason, of sedition, and no one to come for Peter if I’m arrested. It’s hard to tell who is working for who these days.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Mr Monsarrat asked if Mr Hallward was working on something when he died. Some sort of story. I said I didn’t know. Peter, tell the lady what you were doing the day Mr Hallward died.’

‘He said one day I could move letters round in those frames,’ said Peter. ‘But I had to learn how it worked first. He told me I was a copyboy – never had me copy anything, mind, even though I have my letters.’

‘What did you do, then, as a copyboy?’ asked Hannah.

‘Collect things. Drop things off. Make sure Mr Hallward knew where everyone was. And I had to run to the gaol. The day it happened.’

Hannah glared at the man behind her. ‘Really, Mr Cullen! No matter how urgent it was, why would you send a young lad to a place like that?’

Cullen looked down. ‘Hallward’s insistence. As I told Mr Monsarrat, he knew he was going to be arrested. So, before they took him, he told me to send Peter to gaol two days hence, in the morning. Said he’d have something to bring back.’

‘The story he was working on,’ said Hannah. ‘What was it?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Peter, ‘but I thought I might have a read of it on the way back.’

‘He’d have cuffed your ear had he known,’ said Cullen.

‘He’d have been in no place to. And I wouldn’t have told anyone. But I didn’t get to the gaol in time. I heard a shot, and I couldn’t hear anything else for a while afterwards, like I’d gone deaf. I ran straight back here.’

‘If it deafened you for a little while,’ said Hannah, ‘it must have been close.’

Peter nodded. ‘It was just above me. It came from outside the gaol – from the tallest house I’ve ever seen.’

Monsarrat wished that Mrs Selwyn’s hand had belonged to Grace. But he refocused his thoughts back to Hallward’s murder, as he forced his feet to carry him back to the gaol. Before he could gain the door, though, a figure stepped out of the shadows.

‘I bring greetings to the governor’s bloodhound,’ said the man, bowing low. When he straightened again, Monsarrat saw the face of the speaker at today’s rally: Mr Donnelly.

‘The colony’s bloodhound is more how I would describe myself,’ said Monsarrat. ‘But greetings, of course, to you as well.’

‘Monsarrat?’ the man said.

Monsarrat inclined his head.

‘Brendan Donnelly, at your service. Now, Mr Monsarrat, to give you some respite from all of those questions you’ve no doubt been asking, I have one for you.’

‘Very well. I can’t guarantee, though, that I’ll be able to answer it.’

‘I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with this one,’ said Donnelly. ‘I was wondering, Mr Monsarrat, do you like fishing?’