‘Registrar. ‘
Francis Codlington rises from his chair. His impatience is, obvious as he brushes his hand through his mop of white hair. ‘Your Honour, I am hard put to know where all this is leading. Perhaps my learned colleague will come to the point? With the greatest respect, what does Mr Carter’s missing child have to do with this case?’
‘If you will give me just a little longer I think it might become clear, Your Honour,’ Richard Runche says. Then he turns to Banjo Carter. ‘Mr Carter, will you tell us what happened next? Let me remind you, you were with the police sergeant. Where was this, Grong Grong?’
‘Yessir, at the police station. The sergeant says, “There you go, Banjo, no point in making trouble, mate. Your little daughter’s gorn and nobody’s to blame. The case is closed, the police have closed their investigation.” He gives me back me photograph,’ Banjo points to the letter Richard Runche still holds, ‘and I ask him for that letter from the Abo Board, he give me that too.’
‘Thank you, Mr Carter.’ Richard Runche turns to the judge. ‘Your Honour, I submit this letter for the court’s perusal and I would like to call to the witness box Mr Joshua Phillips.’
Joshua Phillips is almost the direct opposite in appearance to Banjo Carter, though both are small. He is a man in his mid-thirties with a weasel-like face and a pink scalp covered with thin wisps of straw-coloured hair lying flat against his skin. His eyes are red-rimmed and of a distinctly watery blue and his face has a strangely scorched appearance, as though he works in a blast furnace. His eyes dart about the courtroom to see if there is anyone he recognises and he pulls nervously at the lobe of his right ear every few seconds. He finally sees Moishe Goldberg and smiles nervously.
Joshua Phillips takes the oath with great solemnity and has to be reminded to return the Bible to the clerk of the court.
‘Mr Phillips, what is your occupation?’ Runche asks.
‘I work in a bakery, sir.’
‘And prior to your present position what did you do?’
‘I was odd-job man at the Girls’ Home in Cootamundra, sir.’
‘The Girls’ Home?’
‘For the Aboriginal girls,’ Phillips replies, tugging on the lobe of his ear.
‘Ah, the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls?’
‘Yes sir, that was the one.’
‘Mr Phillips, did you, while you were at the home, ever come across a young girl of about seven or eight years of age named Millie Carter?’
‘I can’t rightly say, sir, they all looked the same to me. They wasn’t allowed to speak to us, nor us to them,’ he explains.
‘Think carefully, Mr Phillips, a very dark little girl, she could easily have been mistaken for a full-blood.’ Phillips shakes his head. ‘I can’t say, sir.’ ‘Well the
n, let me ask you another question. On the morning of the fifth of June, shortly before five o’clock, were you called to the courtyard of the Girls’ Home where there had been some sort of an accident?’
Joshua Phillips’s eyes grow suddenly bigger. ‘It weren’t no accident, she was tied up to the bell-post.’ ‘Who was?’
‘This little black girl.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘Well, the matron said I was to cut her down.’
‘Was there anyone else present?’
‘Yes, sir, the schoolteacher, Mrs Roberts.’
‘What did you do then?’
‘Well I untied the ropes round her ankles and wrists that was tied to the post and I, you know, tried to pump her chest like.’ Joshua Phillips looks at the judge and then back at Runche. ‘I were a stretcher-bearer in the war, sir.’
‘And to what effect, Mr Phillips?’
‘I beg pardon, sir?’
‘Did your efforts to revive the young girl help?’