The Murder of Mary Russell (6 page)

“Sir, I really don't know why you wish me to perform this task of—”

“Ha!” her father barked, shooting upright on the bed.

Clarissa flung herself backwards with Allie, but Papa didn't lunge at them, just sat with an astonished look on his once-dear features. “Do it again,” he demanded.

So, keeping Allie firmly behind her, Clarissa rehearsed for a moment the accent and attitude of the women she heard going into the fancy shops. When she could feel their clothing on her skin—taste their words on her tongue—she took a breath, raised her chin, and stepped out onto her father's stage. This time, he did not interrupt, just let her go on, his eyes slowly losing their focus as he followed some thought into a distant place.

Eventually, she let her voice run down. Her body relaxed into the posture of a slum-child. Alicia peeked around her elbow. Their father sat motionless for a long time before he drew breath and focussed on his elder daughter as if he'd never seen her before. “Your Mum could do that. Change accents. Like a parrot, she was.”

“I remember.” A trip to the shops with Mama could be like going down the street with half a dozen different women, as she shifted from her natural brogue to the stretched-out sounds of the local shopkeepers and then into the clipped English of the hat-maker, dipping into the exoticisms of the Greek fishmonger and his Chinese wife. All so naturally, Clarissa wasn't even certain her mother had been aware of it.

“How do you do that?” he asked. “How do you learn what people sound like?”

“I dunno. I hear things, I guess. Fit my tongue around them.”

He looked down at her thin body, seeing no sign of the raised chin and straight spine that had gone with the accent. “It's not just your tongue. You're a right little actress, that you are.”

He dry-washed his face, grimacing at the sound of stubble, then leant to retrieve his trousers from the floor where he'd left them. He swayed a bit as he stood, but managed to work the buttons and pull on the braces without getting tangled.

Then he thrust his hand into a pocket, and frowned. Clarissa's breath stopped. Would he remember how much he'd had the night before? No: not this morning. The hand came out and laid a few coins on the table. “Get yourself some breakfast, you and your sister,” he said, then paused to look at the younger one. “Why aren't you in school?”

“It's a Sattiday, Pa.”

“So it is. Well, to celebrate, I'm going for a bath. See you two urchins later.”

“You won't forget about Officer Taylor?”

“I won't forget.”

He mussed Alicia's hair again, missing her look of annoyance, then picked up his hat and was gone the rest of that day. (Hudson did, in fact, go to see the burly policeman, who took credit, in later years, for having set the family back onto the straight and narrow. At least, until things began to come out.)

The coins Pa had left (added to those Clarissa had taken earlier) were plenty for a day's food, and even stretched for the luxury of an ice from the Italian man. Clarissa took one slow lick, then handed the rest over to her sister. They sat in the last of the afternoon sun, Alicia greedily sucking in the cold sweetness and Clarissa smiling at her sister's pleasure.

She kept enough back to buy a candle—a real bees-wax one—and that night after their Saturday bath (fourth-hand and near cold after Mrs Murdy's family had finished, but still) they snuggled together in bed while Clarissa sounded out the words of
Dombey and Son,
a satisfyingly long time after darkness had fallen. The smell was so delicious, she could practically taste the honey on her tongue, and she didn't even have to get up every few minutes to trim the smoking wick.

Nearing the end of both chapter and voice, Clarissa broke off at the sound of unfamiliar footsteps trotting up the stairway. Most of the other residents were nice enough, but every so often a stranger came. When that happened, Clarissa and Alicia took care for a day or two until they were sure he was harmless: that flimsy door would come down to other shoulders than a constable's.

So at these footsteps, Clarissa stopped reading. Allie was nearly asleep anyway, and in a minute she'd close the book and blow out the candle, to go to sleep with the simple warmth of a sleepy younger sister at her side. But the stranger's feet did not continue down the hallway. Instead, they stopped right outside the door, as if the man had noticed candlelight leaking around its edges. Clarissa's heart began to race as she planned out a defence—and then came Pa's voice, no more slurred by drink than the footsteps had been.

“Open up, Clarrie.”

Clarissa scrambled across the room to slide the bolt, then stared up at the vision that entered: James Hudson, shaved, trimmed, smelling more of soap than of gin, under his arm a paper-wrapped parcel, on his body a suit of clothes she had never seen before. He even wore a new hat, tipped at a rakish angle. He looked like…what was Ma's word? A toff?

“Pa?” Alicia sounded none too certain.

“Yes indeedy, it's your Pa,” he said, sounding more tipsy than he looked. “And a sorry old bandicoot he's been, these months, neglecting his two girls something awful. But I'm back, and I've brought you some treasures for your pretty selves. Go ahead, take a look.”

Alicia slipped out from under their blanket and pounced on the tantalising parcel that he tossed onto the foot of the bed. She gasped, and drew out a fistful of glory: hair-ribbons, dozens of them, every colour under the rainbow and then some. Clarissa was drawn over to them, reaching a wondering finger to the gleaming tangle of beauty.

But Alicia was already digging back into the paper, coming out with a pink frock—pink!—and a pair of stockings more delicate than anything either girl had seen before, and a hair-brush and—

Jim Hudson pulled a stool around and watched the girls go through his gifts. After a bit, he realised that he could not tell what colour the little shawl was, and he suggested to Clarissa that she light a second candle.

“I…we only have the one, Papa.”

The room went still. Clarissa tensed at his expression, but in the end he laughed it off, and said that tomorrow he'd buy them a whole box. “Put the dress on, dearie,” he suggested. “No, not you, Allie—it's for Clarrie.”

Both girls gaped, first at him, then at each other. Alicia's little fists tightened on the pink fabric before, reluctantly, she let it go. In disbelief, Clarissa picked up the dress: presents and pretty things were for Allie, never her. But the universe soon righted itself when the dress turned out to be too small.

“This is Alicia's size, Papa,” she told him. “She'll look better in it anyway.”

“No, I—” He caught himself. “Right, well, we'll find one that fits you when the shops are open. Meanwhile, you can help yourself to the ribbons.”

The ribbons, too, would be fine in Alicia's pale curls, the curls Clarissa battled so hard to keep combed and clean, but as for her own head…Maybe Pa thought she'd cut it by choice, instead of to get rid of the lice? Obediently, she picked up the least shiny of the colourful pile and tied it around her short-cropped head.

Her father's smile dipped a little at the effect, but again he rallied. “A bonnet,” he said. “That'll be the thing. Now, my child, tell me again about those voices you do.”

For some reason, the glorious colours on the bed instantly lost their gleam. “What about them?”

“Tell me why you do them, to start with.”

“Just a lark, really.”

“But it's not. You know the story about how your Ma acted the slattern to get herself shipped here on His Majesty's shilling, you've heard me tell it often enough. And remember how she'd put on a fancy manner if she wanted to impress the vicar's wife or something? Is that what you do?”

Clarissa didn't know what a slattern was, and she'd never met a vicar's wife, but she could guess, a little, what he meant.

“I s'pose so. People who talk like big bugs—rich, like—they get away with things. Even if their clothes don't match. When Officer Taylor caught—when he brought me home, I thought maybe he'd leave Allie and me be if he thought we were, I don't know, gentry down on our luck instead of…” Her voice trailed away: Papa's temper was never more uncertain than when he was coming out of a drunk.

“Instead of no-good brats,” he filled in. But his hands stayed down and his eyes studied her face. “You used to talk like your Ma, more. Scottish.”

“I suppose.”

“Do it now.”

“Talk like her? Why?”

“Because I want to hear it.”

Clarissa didn't like to think about her mother, and had no wish to stir up all those empty feelings. On the other hand, this was the most attention she'd had from her father in a very long time—and, she really didn't want to make him angry. So without thinking about it much, she brought the
R
sound up onto her tongue, lengthened some of the sounds and softened others, and spoke. “Aye, faither, wall i's a fair way to town and the day wa' dreich, so I slid onta tha tram amongst a fat lady's bairns, but I dinna ken the right stop and—”

Her father's stool went over backwards as he jerked upright. Clarissa cringed away behind one raised arm, but again, he merely stared for what seemed a very long time. Then he wiped his mouth and reached around to set the stool aright. He sat.

“Pa, what is it? You're scarin' Allie.”

“Am I? Sorry, little one. So, can you do that parroting with other accents?”

Clarissa could, although it wasn't just the accents, it was the attitudes: a Sydney boy, a girl from Queensland, a dark-skinned woman from the Outback who lived down the road, a wealthy American she'd followed for a few streets, hoping he might set down the packet he carried. She had no idea what Papa wanted, but this felt like the first time, ever, that her father had looked at her rather than Allie. The fact that her trick seemed actually to please him was enough to make the squalid room seem brighter.

He interrupted her impersonation of the sari-wearing Indian woman she'd seen in the park the week before. “Darlin', I think you have a skill. And I think you and me, we might be able to make something of it. You think you can teach yourself to cry?”

Clarissa looked at her father, plainly intent on cajoling her into something. Why did he think she was not going to like it?

T
he shock of the gun in Samuel Hudson's hand froze me like an electric current. The world stopped: sound, breath, heart, dust-motes in a moment of sunlight. My universe narrowed down to a pair of truths: a round black gunmetal hole at the end of Samuel Hudson's arm, and the too-sweet smell of his hair-oil. Absurd thoughts were the only thing that moved:
In my own sitting room?
flitted across my stunned brain, followed rapidly by,
God, what will Holmes say?

Then my chest thumped and my thoughts jostled to assemble some kind of order. Moving with great deliberation, I spread out my hands from the shoulders down, to illustrate a complete lack of threat. “So,” I said. “No tea and biscuits, then?”

T
here were, it seemed, any number of ways to get by in Sydney—and more so, Melbourne—if one had the use of an innocent young face. According to Pa, men with yellow fever—fresh from the gold fields—were just aching to have someone take their coins from their pockets and free them up to go find more. It was doing them a kindness, really.

Clarissa knew this was a story, but playing along with it kept him happy—and sober—for the first time since Mama died. More important, it allowed her to take care of Alicia. Proper care.

Two weeks after the policeman's visit, Clarissa stood on a busy street before a big man with a high hat and a thick gold chain across his waistcoat, her heart thumping as she sobbed and stammered out an incoherent tale about losing the shilling her mother had given her to buy milk for the baby and how Mum would
beat
her…

It had taken her some time to decide on this man among all the others bustling past, just as she'd hesitated over the pretty new frocks Papa had bought, ending up in a once-pretty, now-faded dress and a pair of shoes that looked like the well-cared-for hand-me-downs they were. Pa grew impatient, waiting for her to pick her target, but when she saw this one, she'd gone right forward because he seemed…happier, somehow, in a way that made him feel even larger than he was. It was years before she learned a word for it: “expansive.” Which sounded like “expensive,” and that was right.

The man with the gold chain had spotted her sobbing and stopped; listened to her where another might have circled past; frowned in sympathy where most would have just frowned. In the end he held out not a replacement shilling, but an entire half sovereign—then laughed when her wet eyelashes opened wide. “Can you use that, then, little girl?”

“Oh, sir, I can, yes I can.” Then she remembered her act, and was quick to add, “My little brother will eat so well, thanks to you!”

Her first lesson: no man in a good suit would turn away from a little girl with clean clothes, nice manners, and tears in her big dark eyes.

When she took the coin back to her father, waiting around the corner, he crowed in triumph. His praise flowed over her like water on a desert plant. And—was it magic, or a secret message?—the coin had been born the same year as she: it bore the date 1856 under Victoria's profile. It went into his pocket, as did the handful of smaller coins that same act won them during the day, and they ate well that night.

Then, two days later—magic upon magic—Papa gave her back that very coin, strung on a golden chain. In an instant, Clarissa's lingering hesitations fled. Her father loved her when she helped him, and that was all she needed to know.

Of course, Alicia spotted the necklace. Clarissa glumly undid the clasp to hand it over—but Papa said no, it was hers. Even when Allie threw a huge tantrum—even when she whined for days and days, playing with it around Clarissa's neck, begging and sulking—Papa held solid.

Allie's mood lasted for a week. Then, to Clarissa's surprise, it suddenly stopped. It was rare for Allie to let go a pet hurt, but after Papa took her out for a row in the harbour—by herself, leaving Clarrie at home—the younger sister's woebegone expression was replaced by smug satisfaction and the occasional cryptic and knowing remark.

Still, she was happy, and Clarissa had her necklace. From then on, whenever a doubt surfaced about the rightness of what she was doing, Clarissa Hudson only needed to grasp the coin around her neck to know that she would do anything, anything in the world, for her father.

There were other lessons, as the weeks went on. The second, rather more complicated lesson came about a month after the first.

They were working on what Pa called a “Job” (but she secretly thought of as “Cheats”) near the railway station, in the early afternoon. The railway was important, because he had to catch a train. The time of day was, too, since there should have been a lot of people through the station not long before, but not too many people in now. And, there had to be a train coming very soon, but not one for a good while afterwards.

Papa went into the Refreshment Room for a cup of coffee while Clarissa waited across the way, in a corner where she could see him but no one would notice her. There was a small valise at her feet, so that if anyone asked, she was simply watching it while her mother went to care for her little brother, thank you very much. After a while, Papa looked at the clock over the counter, then stood up. She watched more closely now: he would want her in a minute.

Papa walked over to the man selling the coffees and ices and showed him something in his hand. The two men talked, then Papa turned to point at the table.

I just found this under the table,
he was saying.
I don't know much about ladies' jewellery, but it looks pretty valuable.

Half a minute later, Clarissa rushed in breathlessly. Ignoring Papa, she asked the Refreshment Room man, “Oh, sir, my mother lost her pearls! Did anyone report finding them? She said she'd give five pounds reward!”

The two men looked at each other, then Papa held out the necklace. “Are these them?”

Clarissa exclaimed and reached for the pearls, but her father's hand retracted, just a little. He and the other man consulted without saying anything, then Papa looked at the clock again.

“I've got to catch the train. You want to give me two pounds? I'll let you keep the rest.”

“I don't have two pounds,” the man said.

“Ah, too bad.” Papa made as if to slip the pearls into his pocket, then stopped. “Think you could just borrow it from the till?” He turned to Clarissa, as bright-eyed and innocent as the sparrows pecking crumbs outside the door. “Is your mother far away?”

“She's just down at the bank, to see if they found it there.”

The bank was about three minutes away. Mention of a bank also made this “Mama” sound like a woman well able to redeem her lost pearls.

Reluctantly, the man gave Papa his two pounds. The two men smiled after Clarissa, bouncing away to tell her mother the joyful news. Papa left. And at the end of the man's day, he owed the till two pounds, and had in his pocket a string of pearls already losing their paint.

As they made their way home, Clarissa asked her father if the man wouldn't have to replace the money in the till.

“A course he will, honey.”

“He seemed nice.”

“He was a Mark. If he'd thought of it first, he'd have done the same to us. Two pounds—you clever girl!”

Her father's jubilation left Clarissa feeling oddly empty, as if she'd taken more from the nice man's pockets than two pounds. Thus, the second lesson: a person felt clever, but not entirely clean, after a Cheat.

It was driven home a few days later, when her regret at taking a coin from a man who looked as though he needed it more than she did led to her handing back the coin—and her father slapped her so hard, he loosened a tooth. She did not try that again.

But for the occasional blow apart, their “Jobs” made Papa happy, which was a new and exhilarating experience for little Clarissa Hudson. She also relished being Another—a girl with clean skin and confidence, someone who knew she was going home to a mother and a shining house, someone who was…better. When she put off the Act, her tongue returning to its natural place in her mouth, her head dropping to its normal angle, she missed the Other Clarissa.

Still, if it kept Papa happy and Alicia fed and warm, what did her own feelings matter?

Over the following months, the Hudsons' Cheats grew more complicated. They took longer to plan, and they brought in more substantial sums. They moved from their room in The Rocks to a place with a less interesting night life but sweeter air. Clarissa learned to call the men “Marks”—which turned out to be not a name, but a description, as if they were nothing more than stains in need of a good scrubbing.

Clarissa's third lesson was one she discovered slowly, and on her own: it was best to leave the Mark with some taste of happiness: praise him, give a touch of self-satisfaction, leave him with a brush of humour. Doing so not only made the Mark less suspicious, it also felt more like an exchange than a bald theft. Like those birds that traded one shiny object for another.

This was a lesson she kept to herself.

There were others—even formal lessons, of a sort. That winter, while Alicia sulked off to school every morning, Clarissa attended a very different sort of classroom.

Pa called the weasel-faced old man an “Acting Professor,” although to Clarissa he was the Cheat Teacher. The thin, intense, rather smelly creature her father found to educate her young and nimble hands reminded her of a wonderful story by Mr Dickens that she had read to Allie during the lonely nights. Unlike Fagin, the Professor was a solitary figure, not one who gathered a band of young thieves around his hearth.

Clarissa tried, hard, to make her father and teacher proud of her, but in the end, even though she'd practiced so many times that she woke at night with her fingers making the dip in Alicia's curls, both men reluctantly agreed that the straight picking of pockets was not her strong point. She was better at palming goods, since the key to that was diverting the Mark—and the distraction was where she shone: a little girl bent over a skinned knee, or weeping over a lost puppy, or holding up a found coin in wonder was the most compelling thing in the world, and if James Hudson's own fingers had had more skill, the pair would not have needed to look further for their income.

However, Hudson had spent too much time at rough work to be a smooth pickpocket, and he refused to bring in another partner. Instead, they concentrated on the more involved realms of criminality, those resting on Clarissa's dual talents of mimicry and reading the Marks. Their most reliable Cheat was The Found Note-Case, akin to the pearl necklace, which began with her hesitating at the door of a grog shop with a note-case she had found, and ended with Hudson leaving that saloon a couple of bank notes richer.

Lesson four: greedy people made for the easiest Cheats. And, she found, those with the least guilt attached. For example:

A pretty Saturday afternoon in the late spring; a busy Melbourne street; a brown-haired girl who looked no older than fourteen (though she was) perched awkwardly on the edge of a bench amidst the unfamiliar bulk of a crinoline, her hair swept up and ringletted beneath a bonnet; clearly a young girl attempting to look older than she was. She sat a short distance away from a busy jewellery shop, shoulders hunched and head down, either fascinated by some small object in her hands, or fighting tears. People passed her by, as oblivious of her as she was of them, until a courting couple approached, hand on arm at a primly decorous distance.

When they were ten feet from Clarissa, she glanced up. The girl stopped, pulled from her springtime euphoria by those big, dark, brimming eyes. Her beau would have pressed on, perhaps even more briskly having spotted the tears, but his young lady's arm—and her concern—anchored him in place.

“What is the matter, dear?” the girl exclaimed.

Clarissa hastened to dash away the tears with a childish hand. “Oh nothing, it's nothing at all, not that you can help with. But thank you,” she added politely, blinking a clear, wide-eyed signal of distress.

The pretty girl lowered herself to the bench with the automatic swing of hips that betrayed a recent abandonment of steel hoops in favour of horsehair bustle. She reached out a gloved hand for Clarissa's bare one, somehow catching one of her glove's tiny buttons in the object Clarissa was holding.

“Oh!” Clarissa grabbed for it, working its satin cord free. When she had succeeded, her two hands held it out for a moment. All three young people studied the small, black velvet draw-string bag, until, with a cry of loss, Clarissa's head bent down to cover it, her shoulders heaving.

The story soon came out: a dangerously ill mother, a father honourably dead, a family so reduced in circumstances that all Clarissa had to sell was the ring left by her beloved grandmother.