The Silk Thief (46 page)

Mrs Duff said nothing, but her lips, already rather thin, had compressed into a flat, colourless line.

‘How might that have happened?’ James went on.

Reaching behind her, Mrs Duff yanked on the bell-pull. A girl of fourteen or so appeared in the doorway. ‘Daisy, you were on reception duty the week before Christmas, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, Matron.’

‘Do you recall a man here then, asking about Charlotte Winter?’

‘No.’ Daisy’s face flushed scarlet.

With practised ease, Mrs Duff let the silence draw out. ‘Are you sure?’

More silence. Daisy’s eyes glittered with unshed tears.

‘Daisy!’

‘He gave me five shillings!’ she burst out.

‘You accepted a bribe? You wicked, wicked girl, Daisy Miller!’

‘I’m sorry, Matron, I’m sorry!’ Daisy wailed. ‘I’ve never had that much money, ever!’

‘It’s all right,’ James said.

‘No, it is not,’ Mrs Duff countered, rising swiftly to her feet.

Harrie asked, ‘What did he look like?’

Daisy dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her apron, earning a slap on the arm from Mrs Duff. ‘Not quite as tall as the gentleman,’ she said, nodding at James. ‘Dark hair, sharpish nose, mean face. I didn’t like him.’

‘That sounds like Leary,’ Harrie said.

James asked, ‘What did he want to know?’

‘He wanted to know who the lady’d been to see,’ Daisy said, indicating Harrie. ‘I wasn’t going to tell him, really I wasn’t, but then he showed me the money and said I could have it. But when I went to take it he said I had to tell him how old Charlotte was and what she looked like and where she slept.’ She choked back a sob. ‘So I did. I’m so sorry!’

‘Daisy Miller!’ Mrs Duff had gone almost purple in the face. ‘No dinners for you for the next two weeks, and an hour of prayer three times a day for a month! Where are the five shillings now?’

God, James thought, that was a bit harsh. And so was the prohibition on dinners.

‘In my drawer.’

‘Go and fetch them.’

Daisy trotted off; James could hear her crying all the way up the stairs.

‘Do you see now why we’re concerned for Charlotte’s safety?’ he asked.

‘Quite. Rest assured that no one will be permitted into the orphanage without good reason, and certainly not near Charlotte. I’ll endeavour to have your application put before the committee as quickly as possible. If it is approved before you and Miss Clarke are married, then so be it. I feel that, given the unusual circumstances, such haste is warranted. You, of course, will then be responsible for the child’s welfare.’

‘Of course.’ It was obvious to James that Mrs Duff was quite keen to see the back of Charlotte, now that ‘Lucas Carew’ had renounced all claim to her and there was some question over her safety. Who in her position would want a potential kidnapper running amok through wards of helpless children?

‘Who is this man Leary?’ Mrs Duff asked.

James said, ‘With all due respect, Mrs Duff, that’s our business.’

‘Just please don’t let him in here,’ Harrie begged.

‘Well, of course not,’ Mrs Duff said, and wondered whether she should speak to the senior constable at Parramatta.

Friday was visiting Lucian Meriwether. She’d had the horrors that morning and had been out of sorts, and had whacked him rather too energetically, so now he was sitting gingerly, favouring his left buttock, his right liberally smeared with a soothing salve. She’d apologised and offered him a discount, but Mr Meriwether had waved it off. He understood she was a novice, he said, and these things happened. And why had she been in a foul humour?

‘Had a headache,’ Friday muttered, pouring the tea.

‘Ah. Too much libation last evening?’

‘Could’ve been.’

‘Perhaps you should consider modifying your drinking habits.’

Oh, for God’s sake, not you as well, Friday thought. ‘I think I might’ve had a bad brew.’

‘Anything else bothering you?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Just everything.’

‘Oh dear, the dreaded everything,’ Lucian said, selecting a homemade Naples biscuit. ‘I find, when I have an attack of the everythings, the best thing to do is to deal with those matters over which I have control. The rest, I leave to fate. The trick is to know which matter goes into which category.’

Friday suspected Mr Meriwether had just given her some very useful, if slightly cryptic, advice, but right now she couldn’t be bothered unravelling it. ‘Someone I know, someone really important to me, has gone away, and I don’t know if she’s ever coming back. She probably isn’t.’

‘Ah.’

Friday didn’t look at him, but she knew a loaded ‘Ah’ when she heard one. Had he realised? She’d only said it because he was a man of the world and she had an idea he wouldn’t give a rat’s arse whether she preferred men or women. And it made no difference to their professional relationship. Anyway, she was starting to like him. He was easy to talk to.

‘Have you been drowning your sorrows?’ Lucian asked. ‘Is that how you arrived in the police magistrate’s court?’

‘Sort of. Er, this is a rude question, but how much did you have to pay old Bloodworth to get me off?’

Lucian brushed crumbs off his jacket. ‘Not as much as you might think. He is, as they say, “in my pocket”. Can you keep a secret?’

‘’Course I can.’ Amused, Friday realised that Mr Meriwether was an old gossip.

‘I was visiting Bella Shand’s establishment one day when I entered the wrong chamber, and who should I accidentally interrupt, in flagrante delicto with one of Mrs Shand’s mollies, but Clement Bloodworth.’

Trust bloody Bella to be offering male prostitutes, Friday thought.

‘He saw me, and of course I saw him,’ Lucian went on. ‘Naturally, Clement would prefer that his predilection for pretty boys remain out of the public domain, so since then he’s been in my debt. Try a Naples biscuit, my dear. They’re very good.’

‘Have you been blackmailing him?’ Friday took a biscuit.

‘No, although I could have, I suppose. Everyone’s extorting money or favours from someone in this grubby little town.’

Unnerved, Friday gave him a sharp look. He couldn’t be making a sly reference to her, surely? ‘Even rich people?’

‘Especially rich people, my dear.’

‘I wonder if Bella’s blackmailing him?’

‘I’ve no doubt she’d like to. A very unpleasant woman, Mrs Shand. Her girls are rather attractive, however.’

‘But you don’t know if she is?’

Lucian placed a rout cake on his plate and inspected it. ‘Mrs Wright puts currants in these. I prefer them plain, but there’s no changing the way she does things.’ He bit into the cake and said through his mouthful, ‘Not to my knowledge, she isn’t. But she very easily could, quite apart from her knowledge of his sexual preferences. As you’re well aware, he’s the assistant police magistrate — the last man who should be visiting a brothel.’

‘If she did, he could just have her arrested for running a bawdyhouse, couldn’t he?’

‘Yes. So she won’t blackmail him, and he won’t arrest her.’

‘Oh.’

‘Also, Clement has an insurance policy, something else he has over Mrs Shand.’

Friday forced herself to stay calm, though her pulse was suddenly racing. ‘Really? What’s that?’

Lucian shifted uncomfortably in his chair and carefully unstuck his trousers from his backside. ‘Don’t quote me, and I do mean that, but an acquaintance of mine has it on very good authority that Bella Shand was, and probably still is, masterminding the trafficking of Maori artefacts. Preserved heads? Do you recall? It was in the newspapers. It’s illegal now.’

‘I remember seeing something,’ Friday said, trying to sound only vaguely interested. She poured herself another cup of tea, hoping like hell that Mr Meriwether wouldn’t notice her trembling hands. ‘What sort of authority are we talking about? Would you like more tea?’

‘Thank you, my dear. His own, actually.’

‘A friend of Bella’s? Or of Mr Bloodworth’s?’

‘A business associate’s of Mrs Shand’s. Nothing more, I’d say. His name’s Clayton. Dr Neville Clayton.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘Possibly you wouldn’t have. Calls himself an ethnologist, a scholar of the natural history of man. Interesting fellow. Educated at Oxford but lives in Sydney for now. I believe he’s out here on a collecting spree.’

‘Collecting what?’

‘Oh, you know. Primitive weapons and art, people’s heads.’

‘But you don’t know him well?’

‘Not really. I’ve met him at soirees once or twice.’

‘But why would he tell you that about Bella, if he hardly knows you?’

‘He didn’t. He did some business with Clement, and Clement told me.’

Christ, was she ever going to get to the bottom of this? ‘What business?’

‘You seem very interested in the matter,’ Lucian remarked. ‘May I ask why?’

Friday shrugged and broke a Naples biscuit in half. ‘No real reason, I suppose. It’s interesting, all this gossip about stolen heads.’ She manufactured a shudder. ‘It’s eerie. Like a ghost story. I love a good ghost story.’

‘Yes, well, mind you keep it under your hat,’ Lucian said. ‘I shouldn’t really be telling you all this. But I will. Clayton commissioned Mrs Shand to obtain some heads for him last year. When they arrived from New Zealand they had to come through Customs and Excise, like everything else does. This was just after Governor Darling’s declaration in April, banning their importation. So, to get them past Customs, he wrote to Clement citing essential anthropological research and what have you, and requesting his help.’

‘And offering a hefty bribe?’

‘Naturally. Clement saw to everything and the shipment of heads entered the colony without official detection. Unfortunately, Clayton was somewhat indiscreet in his correspondence and he actually named Bella Shand, together with another fellow whose name I’ve forgotten.’

Friday bet it was Jared Gellar.

‘Clement rather prudently kept the letter,’ Lucian added, ‘and Mrs Shand knows he has it. Well, that’s what he told me.’

Friday thought Clement Bloodworth sounded like as much of a chatterbox as Mr Meriwether. ‘I wonder where they are?’ she said. ‘The heads, I mean.’ She envisaged a bag full of them, including possibly that of Aria’s uncle, Whiro, stuffed under Neville Clayton’s bed.

‘According to Clement, Clayton sent them on to England almost immediately. Or some of them, at least. I don’t know. One would probably have to ask Dr Clayton that himself, and given that trade in such artefacts is now forbidden, I wouldn’t expect a straight answer from him, would you?’

Shite. But at least there was real evidence now to prove that Bella had been involved in trafficking heads, and that would definitely make Aria happy.

All Friday had to do was find a way to tell her.

To Nora Barrett’s great delight, Harrie asked her to make her wedding dress. Nora was busy with her own work, and was in fact behind with orders now that she didn’t have Harrie to assist (though she hoped that would change soon), but decided her customers could wait. She had waited long enough for James and Harrie to stop playing absurd games and finally accept that they belonged together, and she wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to contribute to Harrie’s wedding day. Harrie, of course, had offered to pay, but Nora had told her not to be so silly, the dress was a gift.

The fabric was very fine cream muslin lined with lawn, with a modest neckline, a Vandyke collar of silk ending in a point at the fitted waist, and puffed sleeves narrowing at the elbow. The hem was decorated with a deep border of lace. Harrie, and Nora, would have preferred embroidery, but that would have taken months to complete, and they only had three weeks. As it was, Nora would be up late every night to finish the dress in time. There were also dresses to be made for Hannah and Abigail, whom Harrie had chosen as flower girls, which had made Nora cry.

‘You are putting on weight, aren’t you?’ she said through a mouthful of pins during Harrie’s second fitting. ‘A good thing, too. You were far too thin there for a while.’

Her arms out so she wouldn’t stab herself in the armpits, Harrie said, ‘I think I’m nearly back to my normal shape.’

‘Well, not quite. I can still see your backbone. Is it happy weight?’

‘Mostly.’

Kneeling, Nora said, ‘Hold still. What do you mean “mostly”? What is there not to be happy about?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Plenty, Harrie thought. I’ve still done what I’ve done. There’s no changing that.

‘Give yourself time, love. You’ve been extremely poorly. But you’re marrying a very decent man, you know. Aren’t you happy about that?’

Harrie looked down at Nora under her arm, popping a row of pins out of the waist seam, and smiled, looking for a moment like her old self. ‘Yes, I am. I’m very happy about that. I wondered for a few days whether I’d done the right thing, but I think I have.’

‘Of course you have, you silly girl. Stand straight.’

‘What if he can tell, though?’ Harrie felt her face burning.

‘Tell what?’

‘That I’m not … that I’ve already … you know.’

‘That you’re not a virgin? Oh, don’t worry about that. Once isn’t going to make much difference, not to a man on his wedding night.’

‘And what if I can’t have my own babies?’

Nora sat back on her heels. ‘Now stop that. You don’t know that.’

‘But after —’

‘Stop it! Anyway, you’ll have Charlotte in a week or so. And you can thank James for that, as well. There’s not many men who’d take on someone else’s child, you know.’

‘Charlotte’s Rachel’s, not mine,’ Harrie said after a moment. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with Charlotte’s father.’ Sometimes she got quite muddled about that; everything got jumbled in her head and from time to time she caught herself thinking that Charlotte really was her child. But she wasn’t.

‘Yes, I know, that’s what I said,’ Nora said, repinning the waist seam. ‘James is being extremely generous.’

Yet again, Harrie wondered what Rachel felt about her becoming Charlotte’s mother. She’d asked her — begged her — to say something about it, but since James’s proposal there’d been nothing from Rachel but an ominous silence.

A fat, shiny blue fly landed on Harrie’s face and crawled across her cheek. She flicked it away. But it kept coming back.