A Child's Book of True Crime by Chloe Hooper Page B

diabolical temper and often broke the other convicts’ legs with one swipe of a cane.” Malcolm paused forthe cartoon to register. “Gravedigging was a permanent position: partly because he couldn’t swim, and everyone thought the bay was so infested you could walk to Dead Island, and back, on the heads of sharks.” He paused again—half historian, half stand-up comedian. “The gravedigger stayed on the island, having dug his own grave in the nicest spot, until he began to be haunted.” The children all laughed. “He had to light a bonfire so someone would row over to save him.”
    Malcolm started to recite a convict ballad that no one, now, knew the music to.
    Isle of the dead! well might
    Thy verdant bosom be,
    The last retreat of honor fair
    The death home of the free
    But moldering there, the slave of crime
    And wretch of blighted name
    Sink in the dread repose of guilt
    To rest in graves of shame.
    I breathed deeply, trying to remain calm. Malcolm, with his medallion profile, definitely invested a lot of emotion in all this. The children stood listening to his powerful voice, a crew of Artful Dodgers arrested by boredom. I wished they would pay more attention. It wouldn’t be long until no one in our culture could be bothered to memorize these ballads. And it was not as though the children were thinking of their country’s history. Of course they weren’t. They were thinking: “Those bus seats smelled of banana peel and sweat.” The bus seats had smelled bad—they’d been upholstered in a thick syntheticmaterial with a colorful pattern which brought to mind vomiting tropical fish. The children were hoping: “Please don’t make me sit next to Darren on the bus ride back.” Darren had made Alastair count roadkill all along the highway: “That was an old sock!” “No, it was a squashed cat, I swear!” An older teacher once confided that when he heard of children being badly beaten, he now thought, Yeah, and what had the kid done? I listened to the ballad, wondering if there were any reliable statistics as to how many of my students were descended from degenerates transported in the nineteenth century.
    Isle of the homeless dead!
    Within thy rock-bound breast,
    Full many a heart that throbb’d for home
    Now find untroubl’d rest;
    For home, alas! they throbb’d in vain;
    A mother’s fond caress,
    A father’s care, a sister’s smile,
    Has ceas’d their hearts to bless.
    After a few more verses, I found myself thinking of the Marnes sleeping together. My face flushed. Early on, Thomas had gripped me by the arm, demanding, “So, what have you done?” I hadn’t known what he was talking about. “Have you ever slept with a woman?” he’d asked hopefully. “No.” He tried again: “Have you ever slept with two men?” “No,” I’d answered, “have you?” He shook his head. “Have you ever slept with three men?” I’d asked. “Four?”
    Had Veronica done these things? How many perversions could she check off?
    More recently Thomas had told me about a case he’d come across, a Tasmanian bestiality trial: a husband had come home, found his wife with their rottweiler, and had shot the dog. Apparently the husband had filmed various videos of this happening before, so he shouldn’t have been completely surprised. And perhaps as a result, the wife had decided to sue him. “She could be suing him for infringement of property,” Thomas had explained, his face calm, handsome. “If someone shoots your dog it’s trespass on your dog. The cost of replacing the animal she could certainly recover, provided it was her dog.” He made a steeple with his fingers on which to rest his chin. “But unless this was a ‘working dog,’ as it were, a breeding dog, it would be difficult to recover further damages.” For a moment he was silent. “This is how I’d handle the case: it strikes me that if the woman was in a loving relationship with the dog, and her old man came home and shot the dog, she