Across the aisle from Henry, seated in the very front row, were Billy and Katherine McBride: Billy in a charcoal three-piece with a gold watch chain and a fine white pinstripe running through the suit; Katherine wearing a white pleated skirt, navy suit jacket, and matching navy hat. They were not talking. Billy with his arms folded and jaw set, Katherine’s hands clasped together in her lap, both stoic and silent in the bustling courtroom. When they’d entered, the crowd had hushed and parted and allowed them to pass. Billy’s hand was shaken. Consoling touches on Katherine’s arms and back. They’d taken their seats and there’d been a glance between Billy and Henry Wells, until Billy fixed his gaze forward and didn’t look at the lawyer again.
At the stroke of two o’clock the clerk rose from his table and called the room to order and a frisson of excitement washedfrom the gallery to the lobby and on to those waiting outside. A pregnant silence fell. Strains of the accordion player, andof children squealing, until word reached them too and all was still. From the judge’s antechamber came a burst of mirthfullaughter, then the door opened and a tall figure ducked under the frame. Dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and whitehandkerchief, his hair meticulously parted, his mustache lifting in a smile, Chief Inspector Edmund Noone strode through thecourtroom and took the aisle seat alongside Katherine, who stiffened and clenched her hands together so hard the knucklesturned white.
Noone greeted her and Billy cordially. Politely, they both replied. His name hissing like a chant through the courtroom—Noone, Noone, Noone—as he popped a button on his jacket and crossed his long legs at the knee.
From the same antechamber, Magistrate MacIntyre arrived, shuffling in his crumpled robes up the steps to the bench and floppingdown with a sigh. The valise, Henry realized; the valise in his front hall. EJN were the initials. Noone was the judge’s house guest. Well of course he was.
MacIntyre stacked his papers, glanced up at the crowd, perched a pair of reading spectacles on the tip of his nose. “Neverbeen so popular,” he mumbled, prompting laughter from the crowd. He peered over the rims of his spectacles at Billy, Katherine,and Noone, then his gaze slid across to Henry, sitting forward of the gallery, and far closer than he ought to have been.
“I told you yesterday, Mr. Wells, you’re only an observer in my court.”
Henry cleared his throat and made as if to rise, but MacIntyre waved irritably for him to keep his seat. Henry stood anyway. “Your Honor, I’d be grateful for the indulgence of a table. For my papers, you understand.”
“Sir, or Magistrate, is fine here, you’re not in the Supreme Court now. Very well, keep the table, but remember your place.”He took a breath. “All right then, let’s begin.”
“Sir, if I may?”
“Did I not just make myself clear, Mr. Wells?”
“There is an urgent matter that I must bring to your attention at the outset.”
“Hell, son, I’ve not even got the bloody thing started yet.”
Henry glanced once behind him, turned dejectedly back around. “Sir, it’s the witness. Reverend Bean. He’s . . . not here.”
Pantomime gasps in the courtroom. Billy and Katherine exchanged a frown. Beside them, his legs still crossed, Noone swiveledto the crowd, highly amused.
“What do you mean, he’s not here? Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, when did you last see him?”
“Last night. I even locked him in his room. But this morning . . . he was gone.”
“Sink a few too many in the bar, did he? Get a little carried away?”
Sniggers from the gallery. Henry said, “On the contrary. I have kept him dry as a stone.”
“Poor bastard. Well then, it seems we’re somewhat buggered, since it’s on his evidence this whole thing stands.”
“Perhaps a brief adjournment, sir, until we can track him down?”
“And how exactly do you plan to do that, if you don’t know where he went?”
“He can’t have gone too far. He hasn’t even a horse.”
“You’d be surprised, Mr. Wells, how far a man can travel when he’s running from the law. The witness was your responsibility.He’s the very reason any of us is here. Why would he run if he didn’t have something to hide?”
“Sir, I locked him in his bedroom, there was really nothing more I could—”
“There won’t be any adjournments. I’ve got half the bloody district in my courtroom, men who should be working, a police chiefinspector for God’s sake. Poor Billy McBride is sitting there now looking pale as a bloody bedsheet and all because this reverendof yours took twelve years to pipe up about something he might or might not have seen. Wherever he is, it really makes nodifference to me. We are here at the instigation of the colonial secretary, who has charged me to investigate the deaths ofEdward, Elizabeth, and Mary McBride in the December of 1885, and any actions later taken against the suspected culprits andthe wider Kurrong tribe by the Native Police and the officer in charge, Chief Inspector Edmund Noone. That is my duty, Mr.Wells, and I shall carry it out faithfully based on the evidence before me today. If Reverend Bean bothers to show his faceI will hear him, otherwise we proceed without.”
Grumbles of assent from the gallery. “You have his testimony,” Henry said.
“Yes, but I don’t have the man to swear to it, or to be questioned under oath.” He waved a thin sheaf of
