The Noon Lady of Towitta (20 page)

My mind was in a whirl. I couldn't imagine how Gustave could have found time to court another sweetheart as he was always travelling to and from Adelaide. I needed to know more. I grabbed her by the hair again and shouted, ‘Right, you little hussy, just tell me or I'll really be the butcher.'

‘All right, all right, I'll tell, but please, let go, you're hurting me.' She hesitated before adding, ‘It's one of his boss's daughters, the prettiest one called Clare. She's the youngest.'

Before I had time to say anything, she continued in a sneering manner, ‘And I know what Gustave's been doing here the last few nights – and at weekends too. I know what you've been doing but I bet Father doesn't. He'll be so angry when he finds out what's been going on under his roof.'

‘What do you intend telling him? What are you talking about? You're just saying this because you're still angry I wouldn't let you go to the dance or to Adelaide with Gustave. You really can't think that I'd let a young slip of a girl like yourself go all the way to Adelaide with someone like Gustave. It's not done, Bertha. Everyone would talk.'

But Bertha, feeling she had the upper hand, said, ‘You know that's not the only reason. You're just jealous about the times he's taken me to Sedan in the past and you couldn't come too. When he asked me to go to Adelaide, even if he didn't mean it, you couldn't bear that either. When he said I was pretty, I let him kiss me right on the lips.'

At this last remark I leaned across once more and grabbed for her hair in the dark and slapped her face hard. ‘You are lying, Bertha. Gustave would never say such a thing to a girl so young.' I'd never hit her like that before but she responded by laughing, and then screamed back at me, ‘You old witch, well it won't make any difference what you do now, because he can't marry you. And you're only worried that you'll be left holding the baby. I know that's what you're arguing about. Perhaps you'd better marry the local hawker quick because he's about your age,' she screamed. ‘You're old, Mary Schippan, old!'

What little control I ever had snapped at this point and another me, from deep inside, took over. My face burned and the blood rushed to my head. Before I knew it I'd rushed to the kitchen and grabbed the largest butchering knife shouting, ‘I'll get you, my girl!'

Bertha's laughing became hysterical and she climbed out of bed and taunted me, ‘Come on then, get me if you can, Mr Butcher, just like in the fairytale. You know you want to do it. You've been acting for months like you wanted to do it for real.' And I heard her run after me into the kitchen while making the noises of a squealing pig about to be slaughtered. And she was shouting at me, ‘You'll have to stay in Towitta for ever now with Father because you're too old to find anyone else to marry.'

The rising moon suddenly appeared briefly from behind the clouds and before it disappeared again I caught a glimpse of her outline in the dark as she passed a window. I saw her eyes flash like a pig's, I heard the squeal, and I snapped. Like the child in the tale acting the butcher, I knocked her forward and heard her fall. And like the butcher with a difficult pig to slaughter, I plunged the long-bladed knife deep into the back of her neck before she had time to recover. She turned and leapt at me and hung on me like a limpet, her nails managing to savagely claw at my hair and my arms. Sticky with her blood, I tried to unclasp her as she began screaming for Willy and August.

Her dullard brothers, whom I had known to sleep through gales and thunderstorms, would never hear her screams from their barn beds a hundred feet away. My head throbbed as Bertha pulled at my hair, kicking and screaming. She was far stronger than me as she fought for her life while screaming, ‘He won't marry you now. You'll just become an old witch, Mary Schippan.' I was blind with rage and all the time she laughed, taunting me still and following me into our parents' bedroom.

Then suddenly the laughing stopped and I heard her slump to the floor in the pitch darkness. She laughed just once more, but stopped as though gagged and then there was silence. I felt about to find her stretched out on the floor on her stomach. I pulled her head up by her hair and, putting the knife into my cutting hand, I slashed her from ear to ear with my best pig and sheep-cutting strokes, I don't know how many times.

Sister Kathleen was silent when I paused. ‘Are you all right, shall I go on?' Although she looked stunned and her voice wavered, she answered, ‘Yes, don't stop now.'

I say it all happened like this for I can only think that's what must have happened. Or perhaps it was a nightmare and someone else did it. I don't know. What I knew was Bertha lying there, in the bedroom, unmoving. Surely not my little sister.

The night was still except for chirping crickets. I sat down for a few minutes and collected my thoughts. I stung from the scratches on my legs and arms and where the blade of the knife had nicked my shoulder. My head ached from where hair must have been pulled out by Bertha. And it was as I was sitting there that I realised what I had just done. I had just killed my sister like she was a pig over a silly squabble. I was terrified at what I had done. I will be hanged, I thought. Yet, I wasn't really sure that I had done anything. What happens now, what will I do? I had to invent something plausible for the brothers, but what? Think, Mary, think.

I calmed my nerves and as I did so I could see that it was now lighter outside than in. I could now see Bertha lying on her stomach with her arms outstretched. As if mocking me, the soft and silvery moon that had been hiding behind one of the barns rose above it and began streaming through the window onto the bloody scene. It shone on the knife on the floor in the kitchen. I stepped in warm sticky blood as I picked it up and walked around in my damp stockinged feet clutching the knife trying to find a place to hide it. I went through the front door, and stretching up toward the thatch roof I drove the knife deep under the thatch. At the pump I took off my stockings and other underclothes to rinse them. I washed my face and hands sticky with blood and plunged my head under the pump to rinse my hair. The night air was stifling and it would dry in minutes. I then redressed in my wet clothes and walked around the yard under the moonlight until they had dried.

All this time the old dog that was tethered by a chain some yards from the house had not stirred from his sleep. Nor had any sound come from the barn where the boys slept. I realised I had to convince my brothers that a stranger had come into the house. Yes that would do. I'd invent an unknown intruder, like the goblin in my nightmares. I dressed in my blouse and old skirt and I ran around the yard, working myself into a hysteria that, after what I had just been through, wasn't difficult. I then ran to the barn where I shouted for August and Willy. They didn't stir and so I shook them. ‘What's the matter, Mary?'

‘Quick. One of you will have to go to Henkes'. There's a strange man in the house, he's got a knife and Bertha's in there and I don't know what's happening. Oh hurry up, August. I'll stay here with Willy until you return.'

Willy was terrified at the thought of a dangerous man on the loose and began crying. I told him to keep quiet until August returned and that we had to sit in the dark in case the stranger came looking for us. I deliberately stirred up his fear.

August returned without Mr Ferdy Henke, who had refused to come, believing we were concocting a story. So armed with rakes and stakes and a gun we marched over to the house. On reaching the back door we lost our nerve and instead set off to Alf Lambert's house. The local constable lived almost a mile away. By this time Willy was almost hysterical with fright but I tried to comfort him in the best way I could.

It seemed to be hours before we came back with the constable. He lit the lamp and we all followed him into the house with sticks and forks. I held onto Willy's hand while the constable, followed by August, cautiously crept through the kitchen to the bedroom. The lamp shone on the body of Bertha stretched out across the floor. The brothers gasped in horror at what they saw and the constable yelled, ‘Out of here, quick. There's been a murder and I must get help.'

As we retreated I grabbed my boots from under the sofa and put them on over my burr-covered stockings. We blew out the lamp and ran back across the silvery fields now bathed in moonlight towards Constable Lambert's house. It was about midnight when Mrs Lambert, his mother, made us each a makeshift bed in which to sleep while her son saddled his horse and rode to Truro for reinforcements.

It was almost dawn and already hot when I awoke. I was alarmed to find myself in a strange bed and it took some time to remember where I was and how and why I came to be there. I felt confused, were the events of the night before a nightmare? And I ached from head to toe, I was covered in scratches and my head throbbed.

Mrs Lambert provided me with a large bowl of cool water in the outhouse and I did my best to wash and tidy myself before finishing donning my dusty and shabby clothes. We sat around shocked and silent until Constable Lambert returned and we then followed him and his mother back across the paddocks to our farm. He never once asked me questions about what had happened, so I remained silent. When we arrived back, they stripped Mother's bed and spread it with an old blanket. Bertha was laid there on her back and washed down, but there was no attempt to clear up the blood on the floors or walls.

Shortly after, the place was abuzz with police and locals trying to find out what was going on. I sat on the bench outside the farmhouse. The boys told me they were going to look around the farm for clues. That night I slept in the barn with the brothers and next morning Detective Priest, the very one I had met a couple of years earlier, arrived with a large group of reinforcements.

News certainly travelled fast by the bush telegraph for Mother and Father returned from Eden Valley the next day. The boys attended to the horse while Mother wrapped her arms around me and asked what was going on. She told me that she had heard some news in Eden Valley the night before and they had made tracks for home at first light.

28

Following this confession to Sister Kathleen, I began to cough. I held the cloth to my mouth to catch the blood. It was some minutes before I could stop. Sister Kathleen rushed to my side and after my coughing bout had passed she said, ‘This is such a horrible time for you. I wish it didn't have to be like this.' After cleaning me up, she said, ‘Now look what you've done to yourself. This kind of excitement is not good for your condition, it could bring on a fit. You know there's no need to make up such a story just because you feel guilty about what happened so long ago.'

Although weakened by the retching, I still protested, ‘But, Sister, I am not making this up. Don't you realise that what I am telling you now is true? Why I am not mad with the guilt, I don't know. Had Father lived longer, I would be in the lunatic asylum where that Schwanefeldt girl was sent.'

‘Who is she?' interrupted Sister Kathleen.

‘She's the girl my sweetheart Gustave was supposed to be engaged to, whom I knew nothing of until that dreadful night. After all that fuss and bother following the confession at the trial, Mother told me that Mr Schwanefeldt had sacked Gustave. They had not known that all the time he was planning to marry their daughter he was also making overtures to me. After the admissions in court of his affair with me, the girl's parents didn't think he was a suitable person for their daughter to marry. They sacked him and warned him to stay away from her. She, poor girl, had a nervous breakdown and was eventually incarcerated in the Glenside lunatic asylum. As far as I know she's still there after all these years ranting and raving about cutting throats.

‘Gustave also had a hard time at the hands of his own family. He ended up with no job and no sweethearts and was beaten by his older brothers. A passage was booked for him from Port Adelaide to Queensland. His brothers forcibly put him on the ship and sent him to stay with relatives so he could work in the cane fields far north of Brisbane. He later changed his name, married someone else and had a family.'

‘I had no idea.'

When I told Sister Kathleen that I was beginning to feel cold even though we were sitting in warm sunshine, she put a blanket around my shoulders and over my knees and propped up my pillow. She had been so kind to me since I was brought into the Consumptive Home a few months before when the disease had returned with a vengeance. My life was fast slipping away from me and I was confined to days of sitting about or long sleeps. Before I became too ill Sister Kathleen had promised to take me to Semaphore to look at the sea. But I knew now I would never see it.

She straightened my pillow and looked straight into my eyes and said seriously, ‘But how can this story be true? I remember that case so well for I read about it in the old papers that my parents had kept. They never threw them out, you know, because the murder was so sensational. And of course everyone spoke about it for ages at family gatherings and at mealtimes. We all know you couldn't possibly have done it because you are left-handed and the newspapers wrote that the murderer was right-handed.'

‘Well that may be so, Sister. But you see, what no one bothered to find out was that I can use both my hands equally well. There's a special name for it, I'm told. Further, when I helped my brothers with the slaughtering of a pig or a sheep, I would hold the pig down with my left hand while slitting its throat with my right hand. I always did it that way.'

‘Mary, you really do know how to tell a good story, but you know you shouldn't tell tales quite so realistically for one day someone might believe you. If I didn't know you better, I would have believed that story. And that stuff about Bertha thinking you were expecting a baby. If that was true, what was that about? I don't remember hearing anything about a baby in this story before.'