George Thomas has left instructions, to be given to Coffin Nail, to measure up and make three caskets of pine, and give them the full mahogany varnish so to the uninitiated they will look like expensive Tasmanian blackwood.
On the lid of each must be carved just the first name of the occupant, but at no greater cost than four shillings and sixpence per carving. This is a tender touch that George hopes will distract the mourners’ attention from the cheap varnished wood. He has spelt out each name carefully in capital letters so the dago won’t get it wrong: ‘ADA. GWEN. WINIFRED. @4/6d each.’
Then he’s instructed that the interior of the coffins must be lined and padded in white Chinese satin, which is three shillings a yard cheaper than silk and readily available at Heathwood’s store in Narrandera. Upholstery studs and padding give the interior a prestigious appearance, of course.
As for the exterior of the caskets, these he wants fitted with fancy handles, brass for the girls, silver plate for the mistress of the house. They are to be hired only, George’s offer of rent to Coffin Nail being one shilling a day for the brass and two for the silver plate, the handles to be redeemed by the gravedigger for threepence a fixture after the mourners have gone home.
Finally, Coffin Nail is to deliver the caskets to Riverview by Wednesday morning so that visitors may pay their last respects to the dear departed before they start to get on the nose, the funeral to be held the next day. George Thomas’s note sets out to make Coffin Nail aware, in no uncertain terms, that George knows his coffins, their prices and quality and every trick in the mortician’s book. The I-tal-yin is in for the very devil of a tongue-lashing and can expect a damn good whipping if he attempts to overcharge the owner of Riverview by so much as a silver sixpence. George is fond of saying that it pays to be precise with bloody foreigners about money. ‘Give them half a chance and they’d rob the wax from your ears and sell it back to you as altar candles!’ George Thomas got to be a bit of an expert on coffins during his riverboat days. He always carried at least four of the most fancy kind on board. These included two child’s caskets, children being the most likely to suddenly depart from the mortal coil and also subject to gestures of gross sentimentality. George has long ago learned the caskets that conveyed a child to heaven could command an outrageous price on earth.
He’d also stock two basic adult caskets, as well as an assortment of expensive metal handles, locks, crucifixes and other decorations, pictures and paraphernalia, all at prices to be negotiated in the profitable. context of grief. George believes that death ought to line the pockets of the living, and that those stricken by sorrow will pay good cash.
To the sorrowing husband, he would tap his knuckle against the hard wooden interior of a coffin and shake his head piously before looking his prospect in the eye.
‘Life was hard enough, my friend. She bore you six children in life and never complained, surely a little comfort in death wouldn’t go astray.’ Then he’d produce the four padded lining boards for the interior of the coffin, white silk for purity studded with purple upholstery studs.
‘Purple, the colour of Heaven’s majesty,’ he’d pronounce grandly, wiping an imaginary tear from his eye. If he sensed a little hesitancy in his prospect he’d point to the coffin and say, ‘This is the last carriage taking the dearly departed to the Kingdom of Heaven. We don’t want them angels opening the lid to bare boards and austerity now, does we?’
Ridiculous as it may sound, the analogy of coffin turned into heavenly carriage to convey the dead to glory invariably worked. Coffins made George a tidy sum over the years, the coffin lining being the most profitable element. He seldom completed a trip up and down the Murrumbidgee without selling at least one coffin to a sheep station along the river.
Corpses ripen quickly in the hot weather and shouldn’t be left lying around. Even in the meat cooler with the cross-breeze from the river playing over them they won’t go much beyond five days before they must be gutted and drained of a gallimaufry of fluids. This is the putrefaction, the noxious juices which roil and ferment as they prepare to burst through every available orifice, or build up and erupt in such an internal combustion as to split open the corpses’ bloated guts like an overripe melon.
George Thomas can feel little true grief at the loss of his nagging wife and demanding daughters, but publicly he must be seen to pursue the killer with suitable outrage and vengeance, of course.
To George Thomas’s credit, or so it seems, before setting out to hunt down Billy Simple he had attended to the bodies of his wife and daughters, carefully removing and pocketing the rings from their fingers and the chains from their necks. He swaddled their battered heads in cotton wool and bandages and then wrapped each in a damp bed sheet before winding them about with wool bale twine. He left enough of the sheet above each of their heads to make loops which he lashed with twine, so that each appeared to wear a linen topknot, to which he tied a ticket with their name. All this he di
d alone and asked only for the assistance of two of the assembled stockmen to help him hang his wife and two daughters by their loops onto hooks in the meat cooler, where they dangle with their feet only inches from the ground.
Joe, Hester and Meg only hear Sam Cully’s news on Tuesday, the morning they are to leave Whitton for the homestead. They hear that the three Thomas women have been murdered, but they know nothing of what’s happened to Jessica. As far as they’re aware, Jessica doesn’t even know of the killings, although Joe is worried for her safety, what with a killer on the loose, and he’s keen to get back home.
Hester and Meg profess themselves shocked and manage to shed a few tears when they stop off at a shop to purchase several yards of black crepe for their funeral bonnets.
Later, on the journey home, they exclaim together about the awful calamity. Their eyes are downcast, but secretly both think it might be a lot easier to win Jack Thomas now that Ada is out of the way. Joe notices with a scowl that already there’s talk of inviting Jack over for tea after a respectable period of mourning. Soon enough Hester and Meg are worrying about how long such a period might be, and debating what gown Meg should wear when Jack comes over for the first time. In the end they agree on black with two white petticoats and a small clutch of yellow roses at Meg’s breast. The black dress is for sorrow, the white petticoats to show a glimmer of hope, and the yellow roses for friendship, of course, all to ensnare Jack Thomas.
Billy Simple’s trial takes place in July, just eight weeks after Jessica has delivered him to the police magistrate at Narrandera. There’s been good rain in the Riverina the night before, rain from a sky that’s carried herringbone clouds for two days but has otherwise been dry-eyed, pale as a blister, for six months.
The dust is settled, the sky clean and blue and there is the smell of hope in the air. Joe says a spot of unexpected rain turns people stupid, makes them think things they oughtn’t to, have hope they’re not entitled to, make plans only an idiot would contemplate.
Jessica has been summoned, along with the cook from Riverview, to be a Crown witness at the trial.
She talks to Jack before she leaves, and asks him if he’ll be going to Wagga Wagga to attend the trial. Jack hesitates then says quietly, ‘Jessie, it’s really hard — my father’s going and, well, you know how we’re not on speaking terms. He’s such a big mouth, he’ll be carrying on a treat to anyone and everyone who’ll listen, about justice and hanging the bastard by his balls, and all that sort of thing. I’d be expected to publicly take a side against Billy.’ Jack is plainly distressed as he looks at Jessica. ‘I can only say this to you and no one else: what Billy did was terrible and it can never be forgiven and I know he’s got to hang for his crime .. .’ he hesitates, searching for the right words, ‘I loved my mother and sisters, but it was them that finally drove Billy mad — I know it deep down in my heart.’ He shrugs, still upset, unable to communicate his feelings properly.
‘I can’t help Billy now, I’m ... I’m not sure I’d even want to if I could, but I can stay away and not be a part of the old man’s gleeful public vengeance.’
Jessica and Joe, who is attending the trial as her chaperone, are given two second-class tickets on the train to Wagga Wagga by the Department of Justice. As well as accommodation, all found, at Mrs Ma Shannon’s boarding house close to the courthouse. They also receive a further stipend of eight shillings a day to compensate them for being away from work. This is as much as Jessica and Joe can earn together working an eight hour and forty minute shift as shearer and rouseabout in a woolshed, the longest they can work according to the Shearers’ Union.
At first Joe objects. ‘I don’t take money for sittin’ on me bum,’ he tells the clerk of the court.
‘Why ever not?’ the surprised official asks. ‘The judge does!’
‘Dunno about that, it’s important work, the court an’ all,’ Joe mumbles.
‘Well, what about the prime minister? He sits on his bum all day.’
Joe grins. ‘I starts to see your point, sir,’ he replies. ‘Jessica and me will practise doing bugger-all, hard as we can.’
But Jessica hasn’t been doing nothing — she’s found herself frequently in the witness box, where the more she answers the Crown prosecutor’s questions the worse it looks for poor Billy Simple. Billy has proved to be too traumatised and confused to speak for himself, and simply cries and sighs when put into the box, so that it is soon decided to refrain from attempting to question him. He is unable to utter a sentence in his own defence, and sits mumbling to himself in the dock.
The Crown prosecutor has mounted a strong case against Billy, and he plays on the sensibilities of the jurors with all the morbid details of the killings.