The Ghost of Waterloo (14 page)

‘It’s an odd game, even from your earlier description,’ confessed Miss Hathaway.

‘Well,’ said the Patterer, ‘it has a curious local aspect, which I only now recognise. A few years ago there was a scare that the Froggies – the French – might make an incursion into the southern parts of the colony, along Bass’s Strait, which cuts us off from Van Diemen’s Land.’

The young lady nodded and Dunne paused briefly, uncomfortably aware that he would have to face the reality of today’s similar French rumours sooner rather than later, then continued. ‘The Governor sent detachments of soldiers, perhaps some of these very men, to investigate and secure the area. Off-duty, the visitors were much taken with a recreation played there by the natives. They leapt and used their feet and hands to project a “ball” – really a sack of compressed small animals’ skins. The “ball” was never just a dead beast. This…’ he gestured towards the soldiers’ ball ‘is a refinement, probably an animal bladder inflated in a skin casing. I believe the native language is now even applied to supporters,’ he continued, indicating the noisy crowd following the seesawing play. ‘We have come to call them “barrackers” – both from the Cockney word
barrakin
, meaning a discordant mix of words and from a native word for amusement and chaffing,
borak
.

‘The game’s native name appears to be
marn grook
, whatever that means. Goodness knows what settlers will call its Australian rules.’

The soldiers’ contest progressed, the opposing ranks sweeping the ball, which had now become rather misshapen by manhandling, from goal to distant goal.

A new player suddenly joined the scrimmage – a skinny black man with only tattered trousers and no footwear. He soared over the heads of the others, grasped the ball and landed lightly. From perhaps fifty yards’ range he kicked the ball towards a goal. And missed the beribboned area by barely a hair’s-breadth to one side. An irate soldier chased the intruder off the field, aiming a boot at the retreating backside.

‘What reward does he get for that kick?’ asked Miss Hathaway innocently.

‘I’m unsure,’ replied the Patterer, straight-faced. ‘Perhaps they could call it a “behind”?’

They both laughed and moved on.

‘You are very knowledgeable,’ said Susannah Hathaway as they left the football brawl behind them.

‘Oh, but so are you,’ Dunne countered. ‘You seem to know much of the origins of your American words.’

‘La, my father is an amateur etymologist and I used to love helping him,’ she said. ‘But apart from that I know very little but the world of the theatre – which, of course, pleases Mr Levey greatly – and I know my Bible, which pleases my family.’

The Patterer raised an eyebrow.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said serenely. ‘I am a daughter of the manse. My father and three uncles are men of the cloth.’

‘Why, then, may I ask,’ he said, ‘have you been performing on the stage – and here, of all places?’

The young woman shrugged and sighed. ‘As to that, it is a long story, to be told at another time, perhaps.’ Dunne nodded. He, too, had stories to bury: the worst being that the Governor and Captain Rossi had declared him to be a bastard nephew of the King.

Luckily, Miss Hathaway took a tangent that brought their conversation to safer ground. ‘Why did you refer to the French as “Froggies”?’ she asked.

‘Ah, there are several answers. One is that Paris was built on a swamp, another that the mystic Nostradamus was the first to label them
crapauds
– “toads”. I favour the explanation that the fleur-de-lis, that emblem of French royalty, resembles a frog. Picture it.

‘It’s just an old eke-name – nickname – in the same way that you New Worlders call Englishmen “limeys”.’

The singer shook her head. ‘Why do we call you that?’

The Patterer pointed to a bottle floating near the shoreline of the Cove. ‘That’s why!’ he grinned mischievously.

‘Don’t tease me,’ she warned.

He held up his hands in mock surrender. ‘On my honour, no. All I meant is that the bottle once contained rum. The British only discovered it, in Barbados, 200 years ago and it has since been of great import, for good and bad.

‘It was called “kill-devil” by the locals and “rum-bullion” by its white discoverers, after a country term for a brawl. I fear the connection is self-evident. And the name rum stuck.

‘Kill-devil has been back at work here, corrupting both business and lives, just as cheap gin – “drunk for a penny, dead drunk for threepence, dead for a shilling” – destroys Englishmen and women. And just as your “Indians” suffer from firewater – whiskey – ours are unmanned by rum.

‘Its value surfaced only when a Royal Navy Admiral, Edward Vernon, issued watered rum to sailors, who forever after called it “grog”, because Vernon was known as “Old Grogram”: he wore a proofed coat of that material.’

Miss Hathaway seemed puzzled. ‘
That
does not sound a very valuable or healthy habit to spread.’

‘But,’ continued Dunne, ‘after the juice of limes or lemons was added to the rum, and the issue was made compulsory from 1795, scurvy was reduced. The French Navy, on the other hand, issued only wine, which has no similar healthful benefit.

‘Thus, rum helped to make the English fitter sailors and gunners. The Duke of Wellington is said to have claimed that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. I may say that the Battle of Trafalgar was won on the playing fields of drinkin’!’

Any anticipated approbation for his wisdom and wit never came. His companion was suddenly serious. ‘You have not always had the best sailors or cannon-servers,’ she said coolly. ‘People here should still remember and fear the name Captain David Porter —’

A growing rumble on the road behind interrupted her remarks and made them both turn. Dunne recognised Captain Rossi driving wildly, with William the Pieman grimly holding onto his windblown hat with its Medusa-like streamers. The Police Chief was already shouting at them, although the message was whipped away and lost.

Only when the equipage had shuddered to a halt was Rossi able to call down clearly. ‘Forgive and forget, Dunne!’ he yelled, his Corsican accent thickened with excitement. ‘There’s been another death, a violent one. The castrato Bello has been murdered. Hurry, come aboard!’

‘I can’t abandon Miss Hathaway,’ the Patterer protested.

‘You don’t have to,’ that lady declared. ‘I’m coming too.’

Before the Captain could even protest, she had lifted her skirts high enough to reveal flashes of silk-stockinged calves topped by red garters below the knees and climbed lightly into the roomy carriage.

‘Come along, Nicodemus Dunne,’ she cried, ‘introductions later. Now, what do they say – two heads are better than one? More to the point: Daniel, chapter 12, verse 4.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked a bewildered Rossi.

The Patterer shrugged, but the Flying Pieman, who in an earlier life had been intended for the church, understood. As the now fully laden carriage wheeled hard and began to roll back to the heart of the township, William King smiled almost conspiratorially at Miss Hathaway.

‘I believe it simply means,’ he announced, ‘that “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased”.’

The singer nodded, beamed and blew him a kiss. ‘Amen to that, brother,’ she cried.

Chapter Twenty

There was nothing even remotely heavenly about the drama playing out at the Angel Inn, on Pitt Street, when the carriage bearing the Patterer, Captain Rossi, the Flying Pieman and Miss Susannah Hathaway creaked to a halt outside. Even the alleyway beside the pub had a hint of death in its name, Mort’s Passage.

A crowd spilling across the roadway was being herded away by constables, and one of their colleagues carefully checked anyone entering. He would let no one leave.

He saluted as the Police Chief led his party inside. On the first doorstep Rossi had tried to exclude the young woman, but she had said firmly, ‘Signor Bello was a colleague – and, anyway, I am a clergyman’s daughter!’ Taking advantage of his confusion, she had pressed ahead. And now it was too late to stop her.

The taproom had been cleared of drinkers and staff, and a charley directed his master to the staircase that could only lead to guest chambers above. The four clattered up wooden stairs to the first floor, where clearly the action was concentrated. One door there was not only wide open, it had been smashed down, the method employed doubtless involving the large sledgehammer leaning against the wall on one side of the corridor beside a sweating constable.

Inside the room were only two people. One was Dr Thomas Owens, yet again called from the hospital. The other was obviously, decidedly dead.

The Patterer took in the broad picture. The room was noticeably hot and airless – it had no windows or other door and the outdoor spring mean temperature for noon would be perhaps sixty-five degrees. It contained only a single bed, with a small table and chair beside it, a square of matting, a low garderobe and a travelling cabin chest, well worn.

It was clear from the face that the body was that of Signor Cesare Bello. He lay on his back on the floor, near the end of the bed, which placed him, rather neatly, almost in the middle of the small room.

He was spread-eagled; if he had been standing upright his outstretched arms and splayed legs would have mimicked the florid presentation of his stage persona. Even his mouth was wide open, as if releasing his last aria.

The singer wore neat street clothes, and the only obvious clue to his deadly injury was a crimson stain on his waistcoat, just above where his navel would crown his considerable paunch.

Before the newcomers could question Owens or further examine the scene of the crime – if such it was – a heavy-set man of middle years clumped up the stairway and barged past the constable into the room.

His first words were not muted or restrained in respect for the dead, nor were they garbled by grief. Instead, he thrust an angry, beet-red face close to Rossi’s and roared, ‘That’s a good door, ruined! Someone will have to pay. And if it can’t be him…’ he jabbed a forefinger at the corpse, ‘you’ll do, Captain.’ Clearly, to this intruder, the late lamented was wood, not flesh, thought Dunne.

This was Miss Hathaway’s violent introduction to Mr Samuel Terry, the owner of the inn, a man of large fortune and terrible temper. The others already knew him well. Indeed, he was one of the Patterer’s best customers, paying a regular fee of five shillings to be the first to hear business and shipping news. Sam Terry may indeed have been rich – among several epithets (not all flattering) he was known as the ‘Rothschild of Botany Bay’ – but Dunne seemed to have one literally telling advantage over this Croesus of the colony: Terry could neither read nor write and never denied it.

Not that this had hindered his rise to power. Now he was the wealthiest Emancipist – and, depending on one’s point of view, a rascal, a robber or a reformed soul. Perhaps in Australia, a land turned upside down, he could be all three.

Certainly, he had been a labourer in Manchester before the turn of the century, but was transported for seven years for stealing 400 pairs of stockings. When freed, he set up as a shopkeeper, publican, pawnbroker and moneylender. Each role fed the other: drunks and gamblers, some with money or land, others with both, poured themselves into debt and foreclosure. Defaulters received little mercy from Terry.

He soon owned ten per cent of all land held by Emancipists and more mortgages than the banks. He did not deny that he made 50000 pounds a year, yet people asked why he made the humble Angel Inn the heart of his empire.

‘Was there any trouble with Signor Bello?’ asked the Patterer. ‘Was he a good, quiet customer?’

‘He paid up when he should,’ answered Sam Terry rather grudgingly. ‘I don’t run no charity. “No money, no service and my door stayed shut” – that’s good enough for me —’

He was distracted from continuing by Thomas Owens’ voice, which was waxing lyrical and philosophical: ‘What did Seneca say? Oh, yes: “Anyone can stop a man’s life, but no one his death”.’

Terry seemed unimpressed. ‘That may be well and good, Doctor, if there are a thousand doors to his death. But mine’s the only one here – and it’s busted.’

Captain Rossi ignored the outburst and eventually ascertained from the publican that Bello had lunched in the inn’s dining room before retiring to his chamber, never to be seen alive again. Terry was dismissed and stumped out.

Owens spoke up. ‘We’ll know more when I’ve fully examined him at the hospital, but I can already tell you that he was stabbed with one clean puncture of the abdomen – a very deep wound that would have caused profound damage to the internal organs and massive bleeding therein. Death would have followed very soon.’

‘When?’ Rossi was pointed.

The doctor cast a faintly amused look towards Nicodemus Dunne. ‘Ah, yes. The very inquiry I faced earlier about the Cockle Bay Irish cadaver, when Dunne was the inquisitor. Again, there are no certainties, and I would simply say that Mr Terry’s evidence and the body’s temperature, rigidity and lividity – allowing for the closeness of the room – suggest it was not long ago, no more than a few hours at most. Between luncheon and now. You may say he received his desserts, just or unjust.’

His companions, who had rejected Sam Terry’s tastelessness, accepted that Owens’ gallows humour was not malicious, but simply a reaction to his daily exposure to death and disease.

‘Well,’ said the Captain, ‘We must scour the hotel for any sighting of whoever entered the room and killed him.’

‘That may not be as easy as you think,’ said Thomas Owens, suddenly serious.

‘Oh, why not?’ interposed the Patterer.

‘Because,’ replied the doctor, ‘no one entered the room and killed him, as you put it.’

He was met with blank stares.

‘You see,’ he continued, ‘he died in an empty room, locked in by his own key.’