A letter to hold, or to open, it was immaterial which, would have no bearing now on the life of Alys Browne. She sat holding a letter in her hand. She lived by herself on the edge of the town, giving piano lessons or running up a dress. This, she said, is Alys Browne, this must be her purpose that shall not alter, but fixed like a water-tank on the rim of the hill, almost, though without the utility of this.
The issue already settled in the mind, there was no need to open a letter that crackled in the hand, that the hands opened, that the eyes read. Reading words, she said, this is apparently also me, for someone else, is it really me, sitting in a car last night what I am going to write now, because all through this you’ve been so much more aware, walking in a dream and still aware, perhaps, because I love you, Alys, still, this is my existence, loving you, this is its whole point. This is Oliver. I am this to Oliver, despite the pressure of time, and going away is only going away, a mere exchange of environment, or light for shadow, or light for light.
Alys Browne sat by lamplight holding in her hands a letter that was more than this. It was moving, moving, she could not touch with her hands the circle of light that receded, without circumference, there was no limit to the endless efflorescence of light. Happy Valley was dead. I shall go away, she said, to California, perhaps, but always into the light. There is no fear attached to going away by oneself, there is nothing that can destroy, no pain that is final. Then she realized she was crying with the shreds of paper in her hand.
30
A man or woman murdered ceases to be an entity, the same with the murderer, they are names or a column in the news. It is difficult to fasten motives and passions to these that legal inquiry has stripped and print depersonalized. You are finished with the human element. Ernest Moriarty, school-teacher, forty-four, murdered his wife, Victoria Mabel Moriarty, thirty-five, at Happy Valley, and subsequently died of heart-failure on the Moorang road. That is all. Eustace Wing, commercial traveller, propped his paper up against a bottle of tomato sauce in the Narrabri station refreshment room, hoped that his indigestion, hoped he would catch his train. In Sturt Street, Broken Hill, Mrs Euphemia Richardson cut up her Sydney Evening Moon, with a view to the earth closet, into conventional squares. There was a picture of Victoria Moriarty in her wedding dress. At Newcastle in the tram Herbert Kennedy, coal-miner, going home with a pound of brisket, read from the parcel that William Chambers, twenty-three, mailman and lorry driver, had given complicating evidence.
On the night of the 23rd, said William Chambers, I was in the lane back of Moriartys’ when Hagan came out of the house. He seemed kind of upset. You could see. Just one minute, said Mr E. G. Filey. You could see. But surely it was dark? Well, yes, it was dark. But you could kind of see, you could see Hagan was looking queer. I ask you, said Mr Filey, is this the kind of evidence the jury can respect?
The jury, composed of Antonio Lopez, fruiterer, Arnold Winterbottom, publican, James Thripp, grazier, Stanley Merritt, horse-dealer, and various others, was inclined to laugh. They knew, Winterbottom at least, that William Chambers, they called him Chuffy out at Happy Valley, was not right in the head, though driving the lorry, a sober boy, and his mother told Mrs Winterbottom herself, poor Chuffy, she said, he’s simple, but he’s good, and that you could see in the box, his head was a size too big. I saw Hagan come out of the house, Chuffy Chambers said. His lip was a size too big, trembling, and confused. You saw him come out how many times? asked Mr E. G. Filey in the act of blowing his nose. Everybody laughed.
And the man Hagan, this name? Gertrude Ansell, seventeen, employed by Mrs Moriarty as general servant, twisted her hands, they were very red, and played with a wart on her left wrist. Mr Hagan came to see Mrs Moriarty on and off, Gertrude Ansell said. What did she mean by on and off? Twice a week. She thought they were friends. What did she mean by friends? Well, she did not know. Gertrude Ansell went red. Anyway, Mrs Moriarty sometimes had sandwiches cut, and glasses put in the sitting-room, and Mr Hagan brought chocolates, and sometimes they went to a dance. There was nothing else that the witness had seen? Not exactly, said Gertrude Ansell, feeling herself perspire.
Mr Filey complained that his client was being needlessly involved. He would like to draw the attention of the jury to statements already made by Miss Emily Porter, matron of the Moorang Hospital and president of the Philatelists’ Club, and by Clarence Westrupp, bartender at the Crown. On the night of the 23rd, Miss Porter said, Moriarty read a paper on perforations, seemed nervy and preoccupied, and after the discussion went away refusing a second cup of coffee. His hand was shaking, she said. Clarence Westrupp stated that Moriarty looked like death when, in the bar-room of the Crown, he went right out to it, and fell flat on the floor. They threw water on his face. When he came to he spoke kind of queer, said he would go home, they got him a lift in Collins’s truck.
The novelty wearing thin, Antonio Lopez, fruiterer, felt his collar pinch, James Thripp, grazier, was conscious of Winterbottom’s breath. Was twelve o’clock, was that grey monotone the official voice stating that Moriarty was a mild man, sober in his habits and respected by authority. Was only seven minutes past. Yet Moriarty had been subject to fits of unaccountable anger, as parents of children attending the Happy Valley school were able to testify. There was, however, the evidence of William Chambers, not without a snort from Mr Filey, and of Gertrude Ansell to be taken into account.
Winterbottom knew that cove Hagan, that big skite lounging over the bar between stories and sometimes breaking a glass, knew how much to expect, whether Mrs Moriarty or not, had pinched the missus, she said, her behind, and now stood in a funk, you could see, as if he’d got something in his throat.
Clement Hagan, thirty-one, overseer at Glen Marsh, denied that he had been in Moriarty’s house on the night of the 23rd. Chuffy Chambers trembled, inarticulate on his bench. Well, Mr Hagan perhaps could give some idea of his whereabouts? The silence is a clock, is a cough, that foot rasping on the floor. Miss Emily Porter sneezed. Clement Hagan looked at air and said he was at Glen Marsh. And in support of that statement could Mr Hagan provide? Mr E. G. Filey swept with a rustle of papers through the silence and said that Mr Hagan could.
To read the case in the papers, which was without particular point for Eustace Wing at Narrabri, for Herbert Kennedy of Newcastle, or for Mrs Euphemia Richardson in Broken Hill, made Mr Furlow uncomfortably conscious of an element that all his life he had tried to avoid. For reality is not a parcel of the mind of such as Mr Furlow, who reads his paper ordinarily in the office after lunch, halfway between the furniture and sleep, finds that something has occurred in another hemisphere, finds that a fly, his face, his nothing, because by this time Mr Furlow is asleep. But now the news has a fresh and alarming significance, rounding a known face, and encroaching on Mr Furlow’s own exclusive territory. Because you had to see if, to read, then Miss Sidney Furlow was called, even if the stomach queasily protested against this reconstruction and the eye wanted to reject what it had seen.