The Ghost of Waterloo

by Robin Adair

  The Patterer could not judge whether the comparison drawn by today’s animated spectator was apt or not. The Governor’s seizure had been in 1808, a good thirteen years before Dunne’s own clash in London with the military. Then, he had strenuously defended a child caught up in a riot who was being punished by an overzealous army officer. This gallantry had ruined his career as a thief-taker with the famous Bow Street Runners and had seen him sent to the colony – as a convict, instead of on the side of the angels.

  But he could concur with another bystander, who compared, rather sniffily, this morning’s melee with the Hogarthian, Gin Lane-like scene that had occurred only recently outside the tavern next door to the bank. Then, a 120-gallon puncheon of rum had ruptured in the street and hundreds had fought to salvage the flowing free drink. Yes, he had seen that – in fact, it was the very distraction that had allowed him to escape the redcoat who was taking him down to the gaol. He shuddered and shook off the unhappy memory.

  The oddly assorted trio now passed into the main banking chamber, where they met the managing director, Mr Thomas McVitie, his nephew, John Wallace, and the teller who had discovered the crime, Peter Gardner.

  McVitie was ashen and shaking. ‘They stole 14000 pounds!’ he whispered. ‘What are we to do?’

  What could be done immediately was for the senior constable of the town, George Jilks, to lead the newcomers down steep stairs into the strongroom, which now was brightly lit by batteries of candles and unshuttered lanterns.

  Jilks was a rather reluctant guide. He resented Rossi’s frequent interference in police cases but could not ignore him. The emotional foreigner, who, nevertheless, had served the Crown for most of his adult life, was a figure of power – variously (and sometimes overlapping) as Chief of Police, Chief Magistrate and Collector of Customs. And at 2000 pounds or more a year, a hundred times most men’s wages. Some even said he had once been a secret agent.

  Certainly, Jilks did not understand why Rossi had involved the damned news-hawker or that stupid pie-seller. Nonetheless, the three seemed to enjoy the patronage of the Governor himself. Jilks shrugged and pointed. ‘See for yourself,’ he said. There was little left to claim the new visitors’ attention: haphazardly strewn papers and several boxes, some with their lids smashed open.

  A gang of prisoners from the Hyde Park Barracks had been conscripted to enlarge the eye-catching new focal point of the vault – the hole into the drain. Rossi and his aides climbed through, taking a lantern.

  A scatter of banknotes attracted the Flying Pieman’s eye. He examined one; it was unmarked, not endorsed for circulation. He nodded approvingly. The thieves, wisely, seemed to have decided to discard such notes. One robber, however, had found that a handful of this valueless currency had a use. The Patterer picked up several of these, but dropped them hurriedly. ‘Jesus!’ he said with disgust. ‘They’ve used them as arse-wipes!’ Rossi stifled a laugh.

  The light filtering through the drain’s street grille indicated where the intruders had entered and left. Apart from the mess and the stench, the tunnel floor supported only a tinderbox, open chests, four empty rum bottles, a pannikin and a broken oil lamp.

  ‘What the devil did they dig with?’ asked Captain Rossi when they had clambered back into the vault.

  George Jilks answered the question by taking a heavy hessian sack from a constable and tipping the contents onto the flagged floor. ‘They left these in the drain,’ he said. There were weighty large-toothed files, a stone saw and two crowbars, one heavy-duty and the other with a needle point for digging through mortar to weaken stone and brick walls.

  The tools were both functional and beautiful, clearly the work of a craftsman.

  ‘I’ve never seen such working tools so delicate,’ said William King.

  Chief Constable Jilks was smug. ‘Oh, but I have!’

  Chapter Ten

  A good fellow is one who … never confesses a theft or gives evidence against an associate.

  – Dr Peter Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales (1827)

  Captain Rossi banged his fist on the table in the taproom of the Hope and Anchor, where the Flying Pieman worked as a barman between bursts of food-peddling and extraordinary sporting activity. ‘That rogue thinks he has outsmarted us!’ the Captain fumed, rapidly rescuing his nobbler of rum from the reverberations caused by his rage. ‘That rogue’ referred not to one of the bank criminals, but rather to the Chief Constable. Misplaced or not, the unease was mutual.

  In truth, Rossi had to admit that Jilks seemed to be well on the way to solving the crime, or at least part of it, barely hours after its discovery. The fiery, frustrated thief-taker conceded it was first-class policing. Jilks had been rewarded for spending so much of his life among old lags. He had immediately suspected two men – Sudden Solomon, whose coining and smithing skills marked him as the toolmaker, and Thomas Turner, the man with a record who knew the bank’s construction plans intimately.

  And then the two charleys – Quinn and Melville – had quickly come forward to recall their now suspicious early morning meeting with James Dingle. He, Blackstone and Turner were in irons, but there was as yet no firm evidence to link them with the crime. Not yet. Nor, and just as importantly, was there a clue to the recovery of any loot. Still, the suspects were on remand in the prison hulk, Phoenix, moored on the harbour.

  Captain Rossi, however, did have one card up his sleeve. He had the influence with the Governor to press for a quick authorisation of a reward for the criminals’ capture. Surely 100 pounds would flush out a traitor? Rossi advised Darling to add a sweetener to the bait and Lieutenant-General Ralph Darling responded by throwing in two aces – a full pardon and a passage to Britain for the man who turned King’s Evidence.

  All the hounds could do was strain at the leash and wait for a fox to break cover. As it transpired, it was a ‘dog’, in a manner of speaking, that made the next move.

  While George Jilks trawled the underworld and the three friends were drinking and thinking, James Wood, an English convict ‘trusty’ – earning a year off his sentence for a two-year stint overseeing his brethren – was writing himself into the story of the robbery.

  Wood, the educated son of a clergyman, had seen his death sentence for theft commuted to ‘life across the seas’, in the euphemism of the court. Now money and freedom beckoned for the man who could warm the cold trail of the robbers. And Wood thought he was just that man.

  For he was the very convicts’ muster clerk to whom James Dingle had offered a bribe in exchange for excusing two friends from the Sunday services on the day of the theft. Wood hurriedly wrote his message and delivered the incriminating letter to the Post Office, addressed to the police. He turned tail and ran, unobserved. He would reveal his identity and claim his reward when it was all over. Until then he still had to work with convicts, who hated and punished ‘dogs’ who ‘gave up’ mates.

  He confirmed Blackstone and Dingle as suspects and added the new name of George Farrell.

  If a floorboard in Sudden Solomon’s room in Cumberland Street, near Church Hill and St Phillip’s, had not squeaked louder than his vaunted ‘mouse-like’ tools, all the thieves may have been able to bluff their way out of the affair.

  But after Blackstone was arrested on suspicion, a constable searching the blacksmith’s humble home was alerted by the floor protesting against his weight. Prising up the noisy board he found metal stamping dies, moulds, a small crucible, a tiny ladle, silver and tin shavings, and a spirit pressure lamp.

  ‘Well, Sudden,’ said George Jilks jovially to William Blackstone when they met on the hulk. ‘What a pity those dies didn’t have a Frenchie king’s head on them, or a Bavarian emperor’s, or something like that. We don’t give a toss about faking their money.

  ‘But you had King George, God bless him, and that’s treason – and the hangman.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘Of course, if you had something to tell us…’

  Sudden Solomon suddenly did have something to tell. He s
hopped James Dingle, George Farrell, Valentine Rourke and John Creighton as the thieves in the tunnel. The charleys picked up Farrell at his house in Kent Street, between The Rocks rookeries and Cockle Bay.

  Valentine Rourke could not be found anywhere and John Creighton, who lived with Farrell, was not at home or at any of his usual haunts.

  He had been picked up, literally, on the shingle at Cockle Bay. Dead from the dragon gun.

  When Captain Rossi received the news of the dead body at the water’s edge, he sent the Patterer to see the mystery man in the death-house of the Rum Hospital.

  This, thought Dunne bleakly, as he mounted the steps into the huge ward beside the Hyde Park convict barracks, was becoming a habit. A bad one. He was realistic enough to see the use and need for a morgue, but …did he really need to be a witness to the ruins of violence, even murder? Yet that is exactly what had happened recently with disturbing frequency.

  For his new descent into the maelstrom of mangled flesh, the Patterer wore his usual daytime attire: a working man’s simple wardrobe of coarse shirt, breeches and jacket, with no hose and the rough shoes made by convict cobblers. He carried a three-shilling cabbage-tree hat woven by a bored and impecunious soldier. All this was calculated to sow the seed among his mostly humble audiences that he had no airs, was no ‘Buck’ Brummell. To lighten his mood, however, he had followed the example of cricket players and added a gay band of ribbon, in this case bright lavender, to his hat.

  He was ready to face whatever horrors awaited.

  Chapter Eleven

  Here’s a corpse in the case with a sad swelled face, And a ‘Crowner’s Quest’ is a queer sort of thing!

  – R. H. Barham, ‘A Lay of St Gengulphus’ (1840)

  The outward appearance of the hospital was pleasing. The building the Patterer approached was the northernmost of three similar structures that concealed their grim atmosphere of pain and suffering, too often unrelieved, behind graceful colonnaded verandahs. The builders had decided, perfectly correctly, that the style already proved in the heat of earlier colonies would serve best. But the services inside failed.

  As well as being popularly labelled the ‘Rum Hospital’ because it had been built in return for a monopoly on importing rum into the colony, this medical last resort had other, less attractive names – many townspeople called it the ‘Sydney Slaughterhouse’ and wags referred to the neighbouring St James’ church and the hospital as ‘Heaven and Hell’. The Patterer took a reassuring look at the church and at the ever-growing charm of nearby Hyde Park and plunged into ‘Hell’.

  He walked through the doorway and into a darkened corridor, where he met a familiar figure, Dr Thomas Owens. Dunne forced a smile. Owens was a friend and it saddened the Patterer to know that the doctor was ill and dying. However, he kept working, and a colleague, Dr Peter Cunningham, and the Patterer were the only people in the colony to know his secret. He had an arresting personality.

  ‘Hello, I’m the doctor. Have a lozenge.’

  An unforced grin met this greeting. It was the phrase Owens put to everyone, but the Patterer accepted a small peppermint comfit in the knowledge that the doctor chewed aromatic jujubes to cover his bad breath and dry mouth, only a small but distressing side effect of his mercury treatment for what he believed to be his affliction – the Great Pox, syphilis. It was also the reason he wore gloves at all times.

  The corridor was as striking as its custodian. The walls in this wing were lined with glass cases and open display stands, all of which exhibited artfully preserved examples of exotic local flora and fauna.

  The Patterer recognised most. There was an amusing platypus, that puzzling mammal, suitably named Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, so much a patchwork of other creatures that doubters would look for taxidermists’ stitches. A burly wombat stared stolidly back at him, and he knew that the pretty, red-headed stuffed parrot was a Rose-Hiller, named after the bush area of Western Sydney where it was first seen.

  He paused at one exhibit that tested his knowledge. It resembled a large dog with striped haunches.

  ‘That,’ said Owens, ‘is Thylacinus cynocephalus, or Van Diemen’s Wolf – he’s a killer of domestic animals and must go.’ He moved along a pace. ‘But you need no introduction to our latest acquisition.’ He nodded towards a large kangaroo with a grey, blue-tinged pelt. ‘The family Macropodidae, “great-footed”, indeed. This is, of course, a doe – a “Blue Flier”. Her buck is bigger and more red-bodied.’

  Dunne leant and patted the large furred sac on the animal’s belly. ‘Are they truly born in the pouch?’

  The doctor shook his head. ‘No, but the pups, which for some reason are called joeys, suckle on a teat therein.’

  The Patterer glanced at his enthusiastic friend. He looked healthy. Certainly, at forty or so, tall and erect, he had a good colour and a fine mane of curly hair. Perhaps the only obvious oddity was the yellowing of his protuberant, almost horse-like teeth, possibly a result of the mercury’s ravages and the inroads of the disease on his gums and cheeks. How does he keep so calm, hold his nerve in the face of his calamity? Dunne wondered.

  They were now at the closed door of the dissecting room. The doctor knocked, opened and peered around the door, and withdrew. With a ‘Sorry!’ to someone inside, he steered his companion into an alcove, frowned and explained. ‘We are delayed by a colleague with unfinished business. It shouldn’t take long. His man is cleaning up. Messy, heavy work.’

  The Patterer shook his head. ‘Just how much of this “business” goes on, exactly?’ he inquired.

  Thomas Owens considered. ‘In a year? Well, we have to anatomise victims of violence, such as your chap, or any other suspicious case. They vary in number – perhaps dozens, one a week? Then there are the criminals who are hanged. We are allowed to take them. There may be thirty to fifty annually in this unfortunate category.

  ‘That may seem a lot. But, sadly, it will not be enough to satisfy the demands of teachers and students when, some time in the nottoo-distant future, a medical school sets up here. You know that at home such demands have led to body-snatching. The “Resurrection Men”, as they call them, steal corpses naked from graves – if caught, they are guilty only of misdemeanour, whereas it is a felony to take the clothes, even a shroud!’ He paused. ‘No, there is even worse in this foul trade.’

  Dunne nodded. ‘Yes, I have read only recently intelligence about two men in Edinburgh, William Burke and William Hare, who murdered fifteen people to sell to a Dr Robert Knox. They smothered them because the doctor required unmarked bodies.

  ‘People are strangely stoic about it; they even seem to see a humorous side. I have a verse I read to people and it is always well received. It is by Thomas Hood:

  You thought that I was buried deep

  Quite decent-like and chary

  But from her grave in Mary-bone,

  They’ve come and boned your Mary!

  The doctor laughed delightedly. ‘I know another by your Mr Hood – and there is a personal connection. I worked in London at Guy’s Hospital with a famous anatomist named Vyse. I recall the doggerel at his expense:

  The arm that used to take your arm

  Is took to Dr Vyse,

  And both my legs are gone to walk

  The hospital at Guy’s.

  Thomas Owens suddenly lost patience with their word games. ‘Enough! To work!’ He strode to the death-house door and pushed his way in, followed by the Patterer.

  The assistant, who was still hovering near a table, whirled and picked up a bucket from the floor.

  ‘You’ve had time enough and more,’ said the doctor. ‘Out!’ The man, a sturdy, dark-visaged figure, said nothing but moved to the door. The pail rang tinnily as it struck the doorjamb.

  As he passed, the man spoke softly to Dunne, but his words made little sense. ‘Do you like violets?’ he asked.

  The Patterer shrugged. ‘Why, yes – yes, I do.’

  The assistant kept walking towards the street.
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br />   Shaking his head at the strange exchange, Dunne studied the room. Much was familiar. The cabinets still intimidated him, with their menacing saws, knives, drills and some quite mysterious instruments – none softened in appearance by even their decoration of ivory, silver, shagreen or nacre.

  And he certainly could not suppress a frisson of fear at the sight of the room’s central features, the dissection tables, one of which now supported a covered shape – which no doubt had not long before been a live human being.

  The oppressive drama about to be played out soon pushed into a far corner of Dunne’s mind the two thoughts that had been sparked by his encounter with the cleaner: that the fellow had an odd interest in a stranger’s view of flowers, and that he had ended his ‘messy, heavy work’ with what an echoing clang had clearly indicated was an empty pail.

  Chapter Twelve

  We owe respect to the living; to the dead we owe only truth.

  – Voltaire, ‘Première Lettre sur Oedipe’ (1785)

  Dr Thomas Owens peeled away the sheet, revealing a naked corpse. The Patterer winced. The shocking wound ensured that there was no need to question the method of killing. The mechanics of that method, however, were a vastly different matter: was it self-inflicted, or wrought by another hand? Perhaps it had been accidental?

  ‘First,’ said the doctor, ‘the nature and the size of the wound clearly indicate that a long-arm weapon, not a pistol, was fired at the closest range.

  ‘Now, let us continue with a few remarks about the weapon, which fortuitously was discovered beside the body. Indeed, it was a service musket, weighing about eleven pounds and measuring about three feet and six inches from muzzle to trigger.

  ‘So, an accident? Well, they do happen. Let’s say, then, that our subject dropped the piece, charged and at full cock, and it fired. But the angle of impact would not feasibly be perpendicular to the chest in that case. Which it clearly was.