The Murder of Mary Russell (7 page)

“Nanna—that's what we called her,” Clarissa said with a brave smile. “Nanna wore it all her life. When Granddad bought it, the ring cost a year's pay. She always used to tell us the story, of how he came to her father with the ring and a solemn vow: that he would love her even when all the diamonds of the earth…” She had to choke out the next words over a sob. “When diamonds had crumbled to dust. And he did. They were
so
in love, like newlyweds even when they were old and grey. They died within days of each other, both in their nineties, and left me the ring. It's worth hundreds. If I sell it, I can save my mother's life. But…”

Her voice trailed off into her hands.

The young woman's arm went around Clarissa's shoulders, she bent close to hear the words. “What? Oh child, what is the problem?”

Clarissa sat upright, taking a sharp, steadying breath. “I thought perhaps Mr Barnaby—the jeweller—would buy it, since he's the one who told Mama it was worth two hundred guineas. But it seems he has plenty of the new diamonds just now—coming out of South Africa? And people want a
new
ring, instead of one with seventy years of love behind it. I need the money today, if—” Another sob, bravely stifled. “If Mother is to have her operation. I shall have to tell her doctor that she must come home, for a time. Until I can find someone who wants it.”

Clarissa raised her hand, and the sun caught fire on her ring finger: the cluster of many diamonds set into rose-coloured gold sparkled, it danced, it threw the sun about as her hand turned this way and that.

Then the dazzle winked out like the death of promise as she slipped the ring back inside its pouch, prompting a faint protest from the girl at Clarissa's side.

The girl looked up at her beau. He eyed the small velvet bag uneasily. The silence grew electric—

To be broken from an unexpected direction.

A small man with hunched shoulders, worn tweeds, and a jeweller's loupe in his hand paused beside the trio.

“Hello, young lady. I am really terribly sorry we couldn't convince Mr Barnaby to purchase that lovely ring of yours. But you were right, it's worth a great deal more than the ten guineas he was offering.”

The young man peered down at the fellow, taking in the magnifying lens he carried. “Er, you're a jeweller?”

“That I am, young man. Though unfortunately, a jeweller without much cash just at the moment. The races, you know?” He gave a rueful chuckle. “Otherwise I'd have offered this young lady eighty guineas for that shiny bauble she's got, and made a good bargain out of it. Well, I've missed my chance. I wish you luck, my dear.”

He tipped his hat first to Clarissa, then to the couple, and walked on.

The young man watched him go. When he turned back, his face wore a very different expression. Speculative, perhaps. One might even say it held a touch of greed.

“Young lady,” he purred. “I hate to see you in distress. Perhaps I might help you out, and take that ring off your hands. Now, how much is it your mother needs for her operation?”

Clarissa blinked up at him. The young man's lack of reaction when “the jeweller” said
ten guineas
told her there was more than that in his note-case. How much more? “The doctor said it would be thirty-five pounds altogether,” she lamented. The eyes made a fractional retreat. “—but he said that if I could pay him twenty-five now, I could work the rest off over the coming year.”

That speculation returned to his gaze.

The girl rose, laying one hand on her beau's manly arm. “Oh, Freddie, we could help this poor girl, and save a life! And…” Her voice drifted away in a blush, indicating that Freddie had not actually spoken for her hand yet. Strictly speaking, a ring was premature. However, was this not a minor point when balanced against seventy years of deep and abiding love?

The girl's blush deepened when Freddie reached into his breast pocket. Clarissa and her father were long gone by the time Monday morning came along, and a real jeweller told Freddie that the paste diamond in his hand was worth, at most, five shillings.

A
s their success grew, as Clarissa matured, the Cheats became more sure, more complex, the partnership more seamless, their clothing more clearly of the upper classes—hers, at least. Her father never did look entirely comfortable in expensive clothing, even when his hands grew softer and he'd had his teeth attended to. Still, compared to visitors from Britain and Europe, rich Australians often had the hands of labourers, and Hudson had been in the country long enough to sound native. As their Cheats pushed up into Society, her accents and attitudes grew more assured, the amount of money each one brought in grew.

They also spent much of every year travelling, despite James Hudson's loathing of sea journeys. The very first year of their operations, 1867, they spent two weeks in Melbourne, nearly twice the size of Sydney, and found the change of scenery both a relief and a financial triumph. Alicia went along on some of these expeditions, but without making the younger Hudson girl a part of their Act—a thing neither of them even considered—it was not a success. Matters came to a head on Clarissa's twelfth birthday. In May of 1868, her father pronounced it time they bought a house, a real house with a kitchen and a garden. They could have a dog, even. Wouldn't Clarrie like that? Allie surely would.

Twelve-year-old Clarissa Hudson stared at her father, and put her foot down—something she never did, since overt protest threatened to bring his hand.

“Allie's almost nine,” she said. “And you and I are always gone. She's been ducking school, Papa. She's up till all hours, and—”

“She's not going back up The Rocks to play with those prozzie brats, is she?”

“No!” Her father's horror of prostitution, enforced with profanity and violence, would have made her deny it even if Allie had moved in with one of their former neighbours. “Nothing like that, Papa. But she needs a proper upbringing, if…if she's not going to go wrong,” she added slyly. “She needs a family.”

“She has a family.”

“We're never here. There's no one to make her do her schoolwork or come inside at dark. She's going to get into trouble, Papa.”

Neither of them so much as noted in passing that it was the child who was leading this conversation.

“You want to quit?” Hudson asked.

It did not need the dangerous edge to his voice to make Clarissa see the bad in that idea. Without her, Papa's attempts at crime would lead first to the bottle, then to the police, and finally a return to rooms with peeling wallpaper and the stench of urine and cabbages. She shuddered, and brought out the idea that she had been aware of for weeks now: an idea both appealing and repugnant. “I'm sorry, Papa, but unless you want to get a regular job, I think we'll have to find a family that Allie can live with. Just until we get more settled.”

She hoped her father would object harder than he did. She knew that she was being selfish, wanting him all to herself. But he did not. In the end, it was Alicia who cried and sulked and dragged her toes—up to the moment when the spinster teacher in need of income opened the door of her guest bedroom, and little Alicia's jaw dropped. Her eyes travelled across the frills on the bed, the crisp curtains on the window, the little painted bookshelf in the corner. There was even a brand-new dolly with a porcelain head and fluffy skirt, propped against the pillow.

After that, it was Clarissa who had the tears in her eyes, leaving her sister with Miss Constable. And even when she and Pa did move, to a proper flat with a kitchen and housekeeper (of sorts) to keep it running, Alicia only came for the occasional visit.

The following year, they had to buy a series of new frocks as the old ones became too short and too snug. Clarissa no longer looked like a child playing dress-up, when she wore bustled skirts. Once or twice that autumn, she caught an odd, thoughtful sort of look on her father's face. Not until the closing weeks of 1871 did she understand.

Clarissa Hudson was fifteen and a half years old. It took some work now for her to look like a child, but no effort at all to dress her as a young woman. They were in Ballarat, working their way through the booming mine towns, posing as the widowed owner of a large emporium looking to expand business into the hinterland. It was not entirely appropriate to take his shy young daughter into the meetings he held in restaurants and saloons, but his widowhood was recent, and surely it was all quite innocent…

A survey of the railway maps had given them their plan. Three towns: Echuca, Bendigo, Ballarat. Find a Mark, soften him up, lighten his wallet, slip away.

The first two went fine, the takings nice and rich. But Ballarat was a problem. For one thing, the town was in the midst of a slump, having over-extended in the madness of gold lying free on the ground. As a result, the people weren't…happy. Not one expansive face in the lot.

“I think we should go home,” Clarissa said to her father that night. “It would be a nice surprise for Allie.”

“She's not expecting us until Christmas,” Hudson said. “We can spend a few more days.”

“Pa, I don't like it here.”

His face took on that hated expression of wheedling he got when he was either keeping something from her, or trying to convince her to do something she didn't want to. “The place is one step up from the Bush, yes, but the men here have money.”

“I know that, Pa, but—”

“You losing your nerve, girl? Want to trade places with Allie for a while?”

“Of course not, Pa. It's just, I don't like it here.”

“Oh, for Christ sake, Clarrie,” he snapped. “I hope you're not going to get all dithery on me. There's gold here. We'll leave when we have our share.”

The next day, coax her as he might, Clarissa would not settle on a Mark. That night, Hudson got drunk for the first time in weeks, and ended up slapping her across the face. At luncheon the following day, a man approached them in the busy hotel restaurant, gave her a polite tip of the hat, then turned to her father to ask about the shops he was thinking to build.

It was a surprise, but not unheard of, for a man to hear rumours of profit and approach about getting an early slice of the pie. More unusual was the man's willingness to ignore her: Clarissa Hudson was presenting herself to the world as a nubile innocent, a morsel few men could resist. None in her experience had entirely overlooked her.

Until Mr Bevins. She might have been Pa's elder sister, for all the interest he demonstrated.

With growing pique, she watched the man and Pa talk business. Twice she broke in with witty remarks; both times, he gave her a polite smile and returned to the topic.

Then he asked how far the plans had got. Hudson had an increasingly worn set of architectural drawings to pull out when the topic was approaching actual sums, but they were not the sort of thing he carried about with him to the luncheon table.

He laid his table napkin by his plate and said he would just be a minute. At last, Bevins turned to Clarissa—but still, with that absent politeness on his face. It was becoming vexing.

“Your father is quite the inspired businessman,” he said.

“Isn't he, though?”

“Although a girl like you must find these conversations tedious. It's too bad—oh, drat,” he said, and pulled his watch from his pocket. “I forgot all about a wire I promised to send my partner in Melbourne. Young lady, I don't suppose you know where I might find a telegraph office?”

She did, in fact. She started to explain, but he apologised that, being new to town, he was unfamiliar with the landmarks she was mentioning. So she offered to show him the way.

Stepping down into the street, he offered his arm. She took his assistance, and left her arm through his. If she could convince the fellow that she was not a child, she might work herself back into this Job: it would not be good to encourage Pa to think he could manage without her.

They strolled past the shops, Mr Bevins paying a degree more attention to her, although there was still something of the attitude of an uncle unfamiliar with the ways of children about the way he kept his head politely tipped to listen.

Until they stepped around a tall heap of builders' materials and, momentarily out of sight of the street, he picked her bodily up and carried her into the dark alleyway beyond. One hand was across her mouth, the other pulling at the thickness of her skirts. In seconds, all that separated their flesh was the thin cloth of her drawers—and already, those fingers were seeking out the dividing seam…

The nearness of his goal distracted him. The hand across Clarissa's mouth went slack, just a fraction—and Clarissa's teeth clamped for all she was worth into one thick finger. With a bellow of pain, he shook himself free. She drew breath for a scream, but it scarcely began when his unwounded hand slammed against the side of her face. In a fury, his fingers went around her throat—but her one brief moment of shriek had been enough. Bevins heard the shouts from the road, and ran.

Her father put his arm around her shoulders and hurried her to their rooms in the hotel. The instant they were inside their rooms, he pushed her away and slapped her so hard, she fell to the floor.

“What the hell were you up to, you damned hussy? You think I didn't see how you had your eyes on that bastard? Flirting and—”

“No, Papa!” Her voice was hoarse, coming out as little more than a whisper. “I never, I didn't want, I was just—”

“—flinging yourself on him. Jesus wept, what would your mother say?”

“No! I was only showing him where the telegraph—” She was weeping, cowering on the floor.

He hit her again, and kicked her thick skirts, and might have done her serious damage but for the banging that came on the door.

Since she'd been in a state of turmoil when she'd entered the hotel lobby, the manager could not claim that her father had been roughing her up. He had heard the angry shouts, though, and knew what had happened. He agreed to say no more—if they left his hotel.

The Hudsons fled Ballarat that afternoon. Once they were alone in their train compartment, she used the last threads of her voice to convince her father that she was not at fault. That she was, despite her profession and her history, an innocent victim. A child who had failed to see danger in a predatory male.

Her voice trickled away to nothing, but not before his wrath was set aside.

It took many months before Clarissa's front teeth felt sturdy enough for an apple. Her throat was hoarse for a week, her body—and her confidence—badly shaken. When she could talk again, she told her father that he absolutely had to let her choose their Mark, from now on. That never again would she work a Cheat on someone who felt smooth as a sheet of polished glass.

James Hudson agreed, vehemently. Once he'd heard her truth, he was almost as frightened as his daughter. He gave her another long lecture on the dangers of loose morals, and the need to live up to her mother's love—which might have seemed outright hypocrisy, but did in fact make sense to Clarissa. She promised him that she would never give herself to a man except for love, as her mother before her had. Hudson put his arms around her, and wept, and went out and got drunk.

Two weeks later, he gave her a Christmas present of more value than a lecture: he gave her a gun.

It was an ivory-handled, two-shot derringer, tiny enough for a lady's handbag, serious enough to damage. What's more, he took her out into the bush to practice with it, until she could hit two bottles out of three from twenty feet away, and every other one at twenty-five.

Hudson's thoughtful looks disappeared, replaced by a sort of knowing pride, the shared secret of her weapon, and her skill. As he told her, men don't expect a pretty girl to have a sting.

That, then, was the life of Clarissa Hudson. For nine years, 1867 to 1876, she and her father worked their way up and down the young, growing country, Brisbane to Adelaide, running their Cheats. Every few months they would cross to New Zealand for a few weeks (Hudson fortifying his nerves with drink) to take advantage of the fresher fields of Wellington and Auckland. They talked occasionally of going further afield, despite Hudson's horror of sea voyages, but neither of them wanted to be too far from Alicia—though in fact, that young lady seemed little interested in their presence when they were in Sydney, and rarely replied to the long letters her father wrote from distant cities.