The Soldier's Curse (31 page)

‘I'd heard she had been arrested. It's a common topic of conversation in the camp right now. But I thought the major would see through it; I thought maybe she might spend a night in gaol and then be released. Surely that's what's going to happen? They can't try her – my blind father could see she is not capable of it.'

‘Capable of what, Fergal? The rumour may have spread that she has been arrested, but not even the gossip in chief, Peg McGreevy, knows what for.'

Slattery stared at Monsarrat but didn't speak, perhaps fearing that in trying to extricate himself from the web he was now beginning to sense, he would only make its strands cling to him more tightly.

‘And anyway, it seems your blind father can see more than the major. Diamond has him almost convinced. And why wouldn't he? Who else had the opportunity to poison Mrs Shelborne?'

Slattery kept staring, but showed no surprise at the revelation.

‘Very convenient to lay it at the door of the person who was responsible for feeding his wife before she died,' Monsarrat continued. ‘And a former convict, too. I know a great many judges who would see this as a case with no need of a trial, who would want to move straight to sentencing, and of course we know that the sentence would be death. So it seems you and I, Fergal, are amongst the few who know of the crime she will be tried for, and the only ones who believe in her innocence.'

Slattery opened his mouth then closed it. He sat for a moment, then spoke again. ‘You know, Monsarrat, I was about to ask you who you thought did kill the woman, if not Mrs Mulrooney. But we've shared too much tea to dance around each other, you and I. You know the identity of the person responsible, I'm almost certain.'

Monsarrat didn't answer, staring out at the river, and then looked at the copper which was now sitting between him and Slattery.

‘I presumed it was you who came to the clearing while I was away. I didn't have a chance to dismantle it before I was confined to the guardhouse. And then we were off in search of the major, and there's been no opportunity until tonight to get there.'

‘I thought you were making poteen,' said Monsarrat.

‘Poteen!' Slattery laughed. ‘Of course, because I'm Irish, that must be what I was doing. Never mind the lack of a proper still, I can conjure it out of thin air! Magpie, I envy you a life so soft that you've never had to find out how spirits are distilled, or taste the results.'

‘I assume that foul green sludge is wafting out on the current as we speak,' said Monsarrat.

Slattery didn't reply, but looked in the direction of its likely travel.

‘How did you know?' asked Monsarrat. ‘About the properties of the wallpaper pigment, I mean.'

‘Ah, well, my years watching, I suppose. Everyone in Dublin, everyone everywhere, seemed to want that colour. We were constantly dealing with it. And some people in our crew would sicken, and some wouldn't, but I didn't really think much of it, for it's the way of things, isn't it, Monsarrat, that some fall and others stand? But that paper cost me a week's wages. One time in Dublin, I had some laid out, all ready to put up, when a dog that belonged to the house wandered in. I didn't notice him at first; I was concentrating on joining the two sheets I was working with – they have to be exact, Monsarrat, you can't have any misshapen patterns. Anyway, this dog, behind my back, walks up to the paper and starts sniffing it, and then licking it and chewing at it a bit, the way they do.'

‘So you were docked a week's wages for the loss of the paper?'

‘Yes, and the foreman was threatening to do awful things to the dog as well. But it turned out he didn't need to. Later on I found the dog outside in the yard, dead. That's when I first began to wonder – I like patterns, you see. Patterns on wallpaper. And others. And one pattern was that those who fell ill of the plastering crew, it was always the same kind of illness. They would start coughing, then get dizzy, perhaps throw up, but if they had to go home sick or take a few days off, they'd come back right as rain. Then it would start again, on the very same day they returned. I wondered, then, whether something in the wallpaper was at fault.'

‘For the love of God, Slattery, tell me you didn't conduct any experiments.'

‘I'm not a monster, Monsarrat. No, I'm not. But we started hearing stories. Young children who licked the stuff – God knows why they would, but they did; I'm told young children can do foolish things – well, they died. And then there was talk of banning it. It all came out of England, so if it was banned there we wouldn't get any in Dublin, either. The foreman was very worried, because everyone was demanding that green. If it were suddenly unavailable, well, he wasn't sure he'd be able to sell them on other colours. He needn't have worried, I fancy you can still get that paper in Dublin today. But not from me, of course. I hated being in those places, knowing the paper I hung was likely paid for by the labour of people like my parents. That's why I joined the army. That, and I also thought the system which sponsored the monster who destroyed my family might as well feed me. And I might be able to get up to some mischief while I was in the way of it. No one would know, of course. But I would. The balance would shift just ever so slightly, and it might be enough.'

Monsarrat sighed. ‘You know, Diamond has tipped out all of the poison Mrs Mulrooney keeps in the kitchen, to make it seem as though she had used it on Mrs Shelborne. To that point, why didn't you? Use it, I mean?'

‘Hard enough to douse the tea without anyone noticing,' said Slattery. ‘Getting the white powder out of its jar would have been impossible, not with herself in the kitchen all the time. And you know what she's like – she'd have noticed if a mere grain was missing.'

‘Either way, poisoning a young woman who'd done nothing to harm you is a little more than mischief, wouldn't you say?'

Slattery looked at Monsarrat, and rising up to meet him was the hatred he had seen in the young man's face when he was forced to flog Dory.

‘Oh, she did nothing to harm me? She was the agent of my sister's deformity; it was thanks to her that Mary was marked forever, that the split cheek which hadn't grown together properly forced her to do unspeakable things to feed me. His lordship may as well have killed her there and then. And then his little girl grew
up, fed and clothed by the labour of my family and others. And later, she was fed and clothed by the rents, which just kept going up – every six months or so one of her father's men would show up and let us know that next week it would be twice as much, or three times. And where do you think all that money was going? It was going, Monsarrat, into supporting her lifestyle, into keeping her in pretty dresses and trips into Dublin. So you may think she's an innocent, but she benefited from my loss. She's as guilty as her bastard father.'

‘Don't be ridiculous, man. What did you expect her to do? As a child? She wouldn't even have known what was going on.'

‘She knew – she must've done. She was always trailing around after Mary. Mary used to call her Honny, and for a long time I thought that was a real name. But the day her father brutalised my sister, he called her by her real name, Honora. There aren't many of those around now, Monsarrat, are there? Not many women on these shores with overblown names like that. And even fewer who come from Castle Henry, which is the pit that demon slunk out of to disfigure my sister and destroy my family. I don't mind telling you, Monsarrat, I nearly choked when I saw that name on the back of a letter. She'd only been here a month, maybe two, so the letter was probably written when she was still at sea. Castle Henry. Addressed on the front to Honora Belgrave Shelborne. I have been in torment since then and yet the ease with which she lived here, the way she played with her mercy when her father had none on us, her show of goodness that cost her nothing … How could I remember my dead ones and not punish her? Why do you think the Blessed Virgin sent her all this way to the other side of the world, if not for me to balance the scales?'

‘Don't call on your faith now as a justification, Fergal. I've heard you rail against it enough, and its priests. Don't pretend that some divine power lifted her across the seas for you to dispatch.'

‘But it's hard to believe otherwise, Monsarrat. Especially when she was followed by a shipment of that green. It's a most distinctive colour; I think you'll agree. Very bright. And only achievable through the use of copper arsenic, you know. My family paid
for that wallpaper, Monsarrat. Or they might as well have. Why shouldn't I use it?'

‘How did you even know what to do?'

‘I didn't. I did a number of experiments, there amongst the paperbarks. A little bit of tea might have gone missing from Mrs Mulrooney's tea chest, because I wanted to mix it in to disguise the flavour. I just got a few flakes from the paper here and there. Brewed it up in the copper and diluted it until it didn't look like some sort of witch's potion.'

‘But how could you possibly have known there would be no taste?'

‘Oh, I made what you might call an educated guess. There were one or two dogs, chickens, pademelons and the like who helped me with my experiments. That man, he was no more than an animal himself, so I thought if other animals would stomach it, so would his daughter.'

Slattery drew a small stone jar from his coat. He opened the cork stopper and showed Monsarrat the contents – a mostly clear liquid with a greenish cast, from which Monsarrat thought he might be able to detect the faintest whiff of almonds.

‘And here it is, Monsarrat. The ticket to heaven. A little each day sprinkled over the leaves in the tea chest, the one which holds the good tea, the only kind Mrs Shelborne drank. Not much left now. Before Diamond dragged me off into the bush I had to make sure Mrs Shelborne had enough of this stuff to help her along. She was taking her time about dying – it was making me nervous, to be honest. Pouring this into the tea itself that last morning, rather than over the leaves, was a risk. I hoped Mrs Mulrooney wouldn't be able to smell it. As for tasting it – well, by the time Mrs Shelborne got a spoonful into her it would be too late, even if it did taste a bit odd.'

It was nearly completely dark now, but Monsarrat could see Slattery's teeth and the whites of his eyes very clearly. The young soldier gave him a contorted version of a grin. ‘Would you like to try some, Monsarrat? Surely if you're going to investigate this matter fully, you should leave no stone unturned.'

Monsarrat wanted to swat the jar from Slattery's hands, but decided against it – it might be useful as evidence, if he could get anyone to listen to him. Now he said, ‘If you were going to kill me, Fergal, I imagine I would have found this in my tea long before now.'

‘I would never have polluted Mrs Mulrooney's wonderful stuff with this. It was only those pretentious fragrant infusions that herself liked that deserved it.'

‘Did it not occur to you, Fergal, that if Mrs Mulrooney smelled something amiss with the tea, she might have tasted it? You could have killed her!'

‘Well, Monsarrat, the thing about Mother Mulrooney is that she is a good girl. She would never have dreamed of tasting her ladyship's tea, because good servants don't do that, now, do they?'

‘You can't know that, Fergal. You might have been the cause of her death, and if there's anyone more innocent than Mrs Shelborne, it's Mrs Mulrooney. You might yet kill her.'

‘Kill her? I love the woman, Monsarrat. She is the closest thing to a mother I've had since my own passed away. It would be a far darker place here without her.'

‘Well, adjust your eyes to the dark, Fergal. She intends to confess to murder.'

Slattery looked genuinely shocked. Such a course of action clearly had not occurred to him. ‘Why on earth is the silly woman going to do that?'

‘To save you. She will be sent to Sydney for trial, she will plead guilty, and she will be hanged. And there's nothing I can do to prevent it. Even if I went to the major with this story, you could easily say I was making it up, and I'm sure Diamond would back you, for once. In the face of her confession, anything I might say will carry no weight.'

‘There must be something you can do, Monsarrat. You're an educated man, you know the law – there must be a way around this. Please! She can't be hanged!'

‘If she confesses, it's over. My arguments will be seen as an attempt to save a friend, or even an accomplice. Nothing anyone
says will stand if she claims she is guilty. So no, there's nothing I can do. But Fergal, you must realise there's something
you
can do.'

The soldier sat on the riverbank, looking across the wide mouth of the Hastings. Fires were beginning to spring up on the other side and further upriver, lit by natives or cedar-cutting crews.

‘I can't hang, Monsarrat,' he whispered. ‘I can't. You mustn't ask it of me.'

‘Then she will die in your place, take your punishment. And what will that do to the balance you seem so keen on maintaining?'

Slattery did not answer. He looked out over the water, his mouth slightly open, crying now and shaking his head.

This is what was under that card game face, thought Monsarrat. Hatred, a warped sense of justice, and cowardice.

He opened his mouth to ask Slattery one more time to confess, but closed it again. If the soldier would not do so now, he never would. He stood, turned and walked away. He moved more slowly than usual. Maybe there was some legal recourse, some clever trick that could save her. If he thought hard enough, he might just be able to discover it. While his legal training did not make him a legitimate lawyer, his knowledge was nonetheless genuine, and he was Mrs Mulrooney's only advocate. In the meantime, he would certainly tell the commandant what he knew, and take whatever consequences that brought.