The Silk Thief (54 page)

Authors: Deborah Challinor

BOOK: The Silk Thief

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They’d not had enough furniture to fill the place and she and James had gone on a spending spree soon after they’d moved in, buying sofas and chests and carpets and wash stands and clothespresses and all sorts of bits and pieces. Harrie had never seen so much money spent in her life. James had even bought furniture for the spare bedrooms — ‘In case we have guests,’ he said.

Some days she wandered from room to room, wondering just how she’d arrived in such an elevated position. Her home in London for years had been a tiny, dingy tenement with a single window, shared with her three younger siblings and her ailing mother. No matter how much she’d dared to dream then, she had never, ever imagined she would end up living in a house like this, never mind married to the man who owned it.

She’d paid a price for it, though. She’d lost her sanity. But James — lovely, decent, steadfast James — and Sarah and Friday had saved her, and that was behind her now. The voices in her head and the dreadful, crushing guilt had gone, and her mind was her own again.

Rachel had gone, too, and Harrie missed her, but she understood that it was time now for her to live life with James and Charlotte.

Unfortunately, Bella Shand hadn’t gone, and neither, she suspected, had Jonah Leary. But she was so much stronger now than she had been even just a few months ago, and she knew that whatever happened next, she would manage. She wasn’t quite the same Harrie Clarke who’d arrived in Sydney in 1829, but, like an animal hide that had been vigorously soaked, scraped, stretched and tanned, she’d become more resilient.

In a funny way, love had cured her. The love of Friday and Sarah, and of Nora, Leo and Charlotte, and most of all, James. Honestly, it all would have been a lot easier if she’d married him years ago.

Having spent four hours in her favourite pub, the Bird-in-Hand, it was almost dark by the time Friday staggered back to the Siren’s Arms Hotel. She made her way unsteadily along the alleyway connecting the pub to the brothel on Argyle Street, determined to speak to Elizabeth Hislop.

She knocked on Elizabeth’s office door, didn’t wait for an invitation, and barged in. ‘I’ve had the cleverest idea,’ she blurted.

‘Good evening, Friday. Please, do come in,’ Elizabeth said tartly.

‘Ta.’ Friday flopped into a chair.

Elizabeth fanned her face theatrically. ‘For God’s sake, girl, have you been in the pub all day?’

‘No, just the afternoon. I was at the burial ground before that, watching old Clarence Shand get planted.’

‘You take some risks, don’t you? I can’t think of anything more likely to irritate Bella.’

‘Don’t worry, she didn’t see me.’ Friday leant urgently forwards, almost fell off her chair and grabbed wildly at the edge of Elizabeth’s desk. ‘Whoops. Listen to this, though. Clarence might be getting a chest tomb. What do you think of that?’

‘Good for Clarence.’

‘No, I mean, think what we could put in it. Or should I say, who?’

Elizabeth shook her head, the auburn curls of her wig quivering. ‘I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about. As usual.’

‘Yes, you do. Gil! We could put him in Clarence’s tomb!’

Appalled, Elizabeth stared at Friday. ‘Are you saying we should put my husband in with Clarence Shand’s corpse?’

‘Well, Gil’s a corpse, too. And not exactly a fresh one either. Anyway, I don’t mean right on top of Clarence. He’ll be in the ground. I just mean in the tomb bit. It’d be a lot better than keeping him here in your cellar. You’ll go to the gallows if the police ever raid this place and find him.’

‘Yes, I do know that, thank you very much,’ Elizabeth snapped.

‘Keep your wig on. I’m only trying to help.’

‘Sorry.’ Elizabeth rubbed her hands over her face. ‘It’s just that I’m so used to having him near me. I … well, I draw comfort from him.’

Friday couldn’t think of anything more bizarre than keeping the shrivelled remains of the husband you murdered in your own cellar, much less drawing comfort from them, but each to their own, she supposed. She knew Elizabeth had had a long, difficult and complicated relationship with Gil, and it wasn’t her place to cast judgment.

‘You still could. You’d just have to go to Devonshire Street to do it.’

‘You mean stand in the middle of a graveyard and talk to thin air?’

‘Isn’t that what you do here? And it’s what everyone else does in graveyards.’

‘But I’d be standing over a grave with someone else’s name on it.’

‘Stop splitting hairs. You’d just have to make sure no one else is around.’

‘But how on earth would I get him there?’

‘Let me worry about that.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Friday.’

‘You do so know. You can’t keep him here. It’d be like me keeping Gabriel Keegan’s corpse under my bed.’

Elizabeth’s worried expression suddenly turned into a scowl. ‘Hang on, you said he
might
be getting a chest tomb. I’m not worrying myself sick about moving Gil if you don’t know for sure. Anyway, it could be a whole year before that woman puts anything on her husband’s grave.’

‘It won’t be,’ Friday said with the supreme confidence of a pissed person.

‘How do you know?’

‘Bella likes to be … what’s the word? … continuous with her dosh.’

‘Conspicuous.’

‘Yeah, that. If she can throw it around, she will. She won’t leave Clarence’s grave covered in shitty old weeds if she doesn’t have to.’

‘Most folk wait twelve months. It’s the tasteful thing to do.’

Friday barked out a laugh. ‘Well, there you go. There’ll probably be a dirty great marble pillar with a ten-foot statue of God on it by dinnertime tomorrow.’ Then she frowned. ‘Mind you, we put a headstone on Rachel’s grave straight away. Well, Harrie did. And she’s not tasteless.’

‘That was different,’ Elizabeth conceded. ‘Also, don’t you have to wait for the ground to settle, after you’ve buried someone?’

‘Dunno.’ Friday shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t think that’d matter, if you’re having a chest tomb. They’re pretty solid.’

‘But you don’t know if she actually is.’

‘I can find out. And if she does, will you let me move Gil? Please? It’s for your own good.’

‘Christ almighty, I never thought I’d see the day when
you’d
be telling me what’s good for me.’

‘But will you?’

Elizabeth sighed. ‘I’ll think about it.’

About the Author

Deborah Challinor has a PhD in history and is the author of eleven bestselling novels.
The Silk Thief
is the third in a series of four books set in 1830s Sydney, inspired by her ancestors — one of whom was a member of the First Fleet and another who was transported on the Floating Brothel. Deborah lives in New South Wales with her husband.

www.deborahchallinor.com

Other Books by Deborah Challinor

FICTION

Behind the Sun

Girl of Shadows

Tamar

White Feathers

Blue Smoke

Kitty

Amber

Band of Gold

Union Belle

Fire

Isle of Tears

NON-FICTION

Grey Ghosts

Who’ll Stop the Rain?

HarperCollins
Publishers

First published in Australia in 2014

This edition published in 2014

by HarperCollins
Publishers
Australia Pty Limited

ABN 36 009 913 517

harpercollins.com.au

The right of Deborah Challinor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000
.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the
Copyright Act 1968
, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

HarperCollins
Publishers

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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Challinor, Deborah, author.

The silk thief / Deborah Challinor.

ISBN: 978 0 7322 9677 3 (pbk)

ISBN: 978 1 7430 9905 6 (epub)