I couldn’t take Wiranto’s warning seriously; God knew there was no shortage of horrors even in a backwater like Hobart yet it still seemed crazy to me.
‘Did Wiranto really say you were in danger?’
I tried to concentrate on what Tim was saying. Not easy with his fingertips raising goosebumps all over my skin. ‘Yes,’ I said.
‘What did he mean?’
‘He didn’t elaborate.’
‘You didn’t ask?’
‘No. He’d one-upped me once and I wasn’t going to let him get away with it a second time.’
‘What’s this Wiranto bloke like, anyway?’
At the moment I had no wish to think about Wiranto or anything but the, mmm, project currently in hand. But I did my best to satisfy his curiosity.
‘Tricky. Smart. Tough. Good friend, bad enemy.’
‘Is he likely to be an enemy?’
‘If he decides I’m blocking him.’
‘And are you?’
‘Not yet.’
‘What’s he like physically?’
I’d known from the first that was what really interested him. Unsurprising, given that at that moment we were lying on my bed in Cat’s Kingdom wearing a good deal of skin and nothing else.
‘Physically?’ As though I had never given the matter a thought. This was definitely not the moment to say Dr Wiranto was one of the sexiest men I’d ever met. ‘Not my type at all. Quite the opposite.’
‘In what way?’
‘Hirsute. Horrendous.’
‘Huge?’
‘You’ll have to ask the waitress at Domino’s about that.’
‘Likely to know, is she?’
‘If she doesn’t I suspect she soon will.’
Silence as he decided, belatedly, to get down to business. My toes were soon clenching; he had always known which buttons to press. Even when he was busy he liked to chat; he knew how it wound me up.
‘Hirsute and horrendous? I suppose that’s what you tell your other lovers about me.’
‘I tell them lots of things.’
It was a game we played; he knew I had no other lovers.
‘Tell me.’
And that, too, was a game we played.
‘Pointlessly provocative,’ I said.
‘Go on.’
My hand did its own exploration.
‘Profoundly prominent,’ I suggested.
‘That’s nice. More?’
I was crazy for him. He knew that. Crazy for something.
‘I can’t think of anything else to say.’ I couldn’t think, full stop.
‘That won’t do.’
Wouldn’t you know it? The bastard stopped.
I gabbled, articulation trickier with every second. ‘Pleasantly priapic? Penile and provocative?’
He was playing again. He stopped. He smiled. Played again. My eyes implored. He was driving me crazy and knew it but who was complaining? My hips certainly weren’t. My hips had a life of their own.
He smiled down at me as – at last! – he moved purposefully into position.
‘Professor-penetrative?’ he suggested.
My eyes closed.
Here was fulfilment. A wonderful lover, a vocation that enabled me to stretch my thoughts, realise my potential. A fine house with history in its bones. Money enough to satisfy my needs. A yacht to sail, good music, a comfortable bed. What more could any woman want? Who cared about the trinkets of Muar?
* * *
Early next morning, with the dawn’s first light barely grazing the darkness, I got out of bed and went into the library, a long, narrow room smelling of age and paper, its walls lined with shelves of books.
I had investigated the room shortly after I inherited the house. By the look of them the books hadn’t been disturbed for years; my predecessors had not been reading men. Back when I was still flush with new ownership I had decided to tidy things up, see if any of the books were worth keeping.
On one of the shelves I had discovered a cloth-covered notebook the size of a modern school exercise book, its paper foxed by the years. The ink was faded but legible. There was hardly anything in it: groups of numbers without explanation and a number of biblical and other references. Also two apparently unconnected anecdotes: one a cry of pain at the death of someone called Philip, the other about meeting a family called Lamb on a trip she’d made to Queensland. Neither story had any significance, as far as I could see. That was it. I’d put it back on the shelf and forgotten about it.
Last year, when Marcus Smeeton had come up with Catherine’s missing journal, I hadn’t given the notebook a thought. Now, with the advent of the sexy Dr Wiranto, it had acquired a new significance. Despite what I’d told both Dick Cottle and Wiranto, I was more than halfway convinced my ancestor had got her hands on this peacock crown, and so my instincts were yelling that the crown and the notebook had to be connected. I had lived with my instincts long enough to know they weren’t often wrong.
I pulled the notebook from the shelf and sat down with it once again but the rows of figures remained exactly as they had been before, enigmatic and from my point of view utterly useless.
Cross as two sticks I walked out of the library into a pellucid dawn. I stamped over to the cliff edge. The day before I had decided that regardless of what Dick Cottle or Dr Wiranto or even the prime minister might think, despite being halfway convinced that fate and my three-times-great-grandmother must have hidden it somewhere especially for me – me – to find, there was no point wasting my time trying to find something that had gone missing one hundred and fifty-seven years in an undocumented past. As Wiranto had said, a crown was not something you could hide in the back of a drawer and forget. If it had still existed it would surely have come to light long before this.
Yet as I stood on the cliff edge beside the ruins of the old ice house I knew that turning my back was not an option. For better or worse I was a historian and the hook had been set by my chance discovery of a notebook that no one but I knew existed. The world knew about Cat Haggard’s journal; only I knew there was more. Like it or not, I was committed.
More than a hundred metres below my feet the rollers of the Southern Ocean burst in torrents of foam against the dark rock and I fancied I could feel the ground shake with the force of their impact. I thought of the 1929 earthquake and how a section of the cliff had sheared, taking most of the old ice house with it.
Standing there with the sunlight warm on my face I made up my mind to do what I should have done in the first place. I decided to rope in Super Sleuth.
SIXTEEN
I’d read that the name Averil was derived from the old German and meant fearless maiden. Averil Gillis was certainly fearless. The maiden bit didn’t fit so well: ever since I’d known her she’d been involved in more relationships than I could count.
Averil and I met at uni, where we fought like gladiators in the academic arena, dividing between us the various exhibitions and awards that were to be had in our discipline. We competed in sport too, though trust us to be different. No tennis or netball for us. We played baseball for competing teams, I as a pitcher, she as a batter. After one match she paid me the best compliment I ever had.
‘The way that curve ball came in at me I almost wet my pants.’
Away from the hustings we’d been the best of mates, revelling in our reputation as the Twin Sinners. Juvenile, no doubt, but they were fun years while they lasted, full of boys and work and grass and things that went bump in the night. We’d kept in touch over the years, sharing the highs and lows of our lives. Judging by some of her more lurid tales Averil had never altogether moved on from those careless days. No doubt Mrs Boss would have said the same about me. Some of us had never quite managed to grow up, thank God.
None of which was why I was phoning her now. Never mind her shambolic private life; Melbourne-based Averil was the leader in the field when it came to disentangling historical mysteries. Her work on the origins of the crystal skull of Belize had
shown a unique flair as had her investigations into the location of the amber room of the tsars, the priceless work of art that had gone missing in the Second World War. More recently she’d been asked to look into the significance of a uniquely Australian bird – a cockatoo – appearing in a Mantegna painting at a time when Australasia had been supposedly unknown to Europeans. This and other work had earned her an international reputation and it was time to see if she could shed any light on my own problem.
I was lucky to catch her; she told me she had just returned from a lecture tour in the States and was shortly heading to China, where she’d been roped in to help sort out questions regarding the terracotta warriors.
In comparison with work that was certain to reinforce her position in the international spotlight, locating the missing crown of an insignificant island sultanate was a zero deal but after we’d first paid an obligatory visit to the Wailing Wall of her catastrophic sex life, Averil – bless her – said it was simply another historical puzzle and an intriguing one at that.
‘The only thing is,’ she said, ‘I’m up to my eyes preparing for China. I’d love to come and see you but I don’t have the time. Any problem about your coming here?’
I had none, but Demon Dick came up with several. The timing was inconvenient. It would interfere with his beloved budget meetings. At a time of unprecedented financial constraints it was an expense unlikely to advance the search by a single millimetre.
Luckily I had the ace in the hole. ‘Given his interest, I suppose the PM might be disappointed if he thought we weren’t exploring all available avenues,’ I said.
Two days later I landed at Tullamarine.
Averil’s office was three times the size of mine though mine had a view. Tasmania was long on views. We waffled on for a bit about men and how we hated them and couldn’t, it seemed, live without them. A few minutes were devoted to the saga of Sammy, the latest to occupy Averil’s over-generous bed; she fetched us tiger-sized gins and it was time for business.
‘What have you got?’
I showed her the notebook I’d found at Cat’s Kingdom and a copy of the journal that Marcus Smeeton had discovered in the Governor’s House. Averil put them to one side without looking at them and took a healthy slug of gin.
‘Talk to me,’ she said.
I matched her slug for slug, feeling the alcohol’s warmth expand comfortingly in my stomach, and settled down to tell her everything I knew about the missing crown.
‘Twenty million quid?’ she said. ‘Surely there was a guard?’
‘There was a detachment of marines on board.’
‘Yet still the vessel vanished. I’ll bet the guard commander had some explaining to do. Or did he vanish too?’
‘No, the little we know comes from what he said at the enquiry. It seems that some time in the night they were overwhelmed by a boarding party that came on them unawares. He and his men were later put ashore up the coast.’
‘And that’s all the authorities did? Hold an enquiry?’
‘There was a frigate in harbour. The Hercules. They sent her in search. She reported seeing Antares but lost her in a storm.’
‘Could she have sunk?’
‘Unlikely. A few months later a Dutch warship was involved in a battle with a pirate ship in the Java Sea. From the description it was almost certainly the Antares. They boarded her but she was so badly damaged she sank before they could get her into port.’
‘And they found no silver?’
‘No crown either.’
‘I’ve read the paper you wrote on the Governor’s House journal. You mention that the owner of the vessel was Catherine Haggard’s great enemy.’
‘Damn right. Arthur Dunstable did his best to get her hanged in England. Would have done it too if the sentence hadn’t been commuted to transportation.’
‘Why was that?’
‘They were always doing it. Rather than string them up they liked to send young women convicts out here as breeding stock.’
‘And she met up with Dunstable again in Tasmania. That must have been fun. Why did he come out, anyway?’
‘He was a real piece of work. Gambler, lecher, pervert –’
‘Sounds like the men in my life,’ said Averil.
‘Blew most of his money, had to sell the estate to avoid debtor’s prison, had just enough left to buy Antares plus a sheep run in the colonies, don’t you know.’
‘The joys of empire,’ Averil said.
‘Except that later his property was mortgaged to the eyes and Antares vanished like the snows in springtime.’
‘Leaving him destitute?’
‘Near enough.’
‘And your ancestor was blamed?’
‘They’d have blamed her for the Crimean War, given half a chance.’
‘Hardly conclusive though, is it? Unless you’ve got something else?’
‘The fact that she’d have wanted to fix Arthur Dunstable? That and her track record?’
‘Destitute convict one day, millionaire friend of the governor the next? That’s folklore country, sweetie, not evidence.’
Averil topped up our drinks. She took a long, slow, contemplative swallow. I took a long, slow, contemplative swallow.
‘You say Jakarta has sent someone to give you a hand?’ Averil said.
‘I doubt Dr Wiranto would put it like that. He’s more the type to take command.’
‘Wiranto?’ She tasted the name. ‘I’ve met a lot of people in their Antiquities Department. I don’t remember a Wiranto.’
‘He looks more like a soldier,’ I said.
‘Maybe he’s from another department.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like Intelligence?’
We stared at each other.
‘The mystery of the missing crown just got a whole lot more mysterious,’ I said.
‘And of course I may be wrong,’ Averil said.
But I had the feeling she didn’t think so.
Averil picked up the notebook. ‘What’s your thinking about this?’
‘Writing’s like the Governor’s House journal, so I’d say Cat wrote it. The journal was certainly written by her. It matches the handwriting in the letters we have and has details of her early life that no one else could have known.’
‘Where did you find the notebook?’
‘In the library of my house. She had it built and from the state of the room I doubt anyone has looked at it since she died.’
‘Who else knows about it?’
‘You and me.’
‘I’m honoured.’ She studied the numbers then put it down again and drained her glass. ‘You’ve considered a book code?’
‘Of course. But to make sense of it we need to know the book she used. Without that the figures don’t help us.’
‘What do you make of the quotations in the journal?’ Averil asked.
‘Perhaps a hint that the Bible might be the text she used.’
‘It better not be. How many editions of the Bible are there?’
‘Thousands?’
‘Exactly. I don’t think we need worry about it in any case,’ Averil said.
She went to top up my glass but I stopped her. ‘No more for me.’ I always liked to be in control. I enjoyed my drink but knew to a hair how much I could put away without having a problem. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘How many pages would you say were in the average Bible?’
‘A thousand? Thirteen hundred?’
‘Yet the highest number in the figure groups listed here is two hundred and twenty. Not all the quotations are biblical, anyway. I tell you what,’ she said. ‘You mind if I copy it? I’ll run it through one of my programs. Maybe we’ll turn up something. Now… When are you flying back?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Great. I’ll give Sammy a ring and tonight we’ll hit the town. Make it a foursome, yes? There’s a man I want you to meet.’
‘A man as in historical research or as in sex?’
‘Need you ask?’
‘I already have a man,’ I said.
‘A married man.’
Averil and Tim didn’t get along. It wasn’t that he was married – over the years she’d had several of those in her portfolio – but that she claimed he’d made a pass at her the only time they’d met.
‘He was just being friendly.’
‘A hand up my skirt is being friendly?’
‘You told me he didn’t!’
‘Only because I wouldn’t let him. Do yourself a favour, sweetie, move on.’
I knew there was something in what she said. Tim Luttrell was a flirt; it was in his DNA. A dozen times I had told myself it was just his way. We were still an item, weren’t we, after almost three years? These days nobody believed in love being forever, did they? And – a definite plus – no one, but no one, knew better how to whip my ovaries into a frenzy. No, for the moment Tim would do me fine. Besides, who else was there? Which brought me back to the subject at hand.
‘Tell me about this guy,’ I said.
His name was Colin McNeil. He was the same age as I, thirty-two. A bachelor. Star-bright and twice as nice. Six foot tall with the black hair and blue eyes of his Highland ancestors. Craggy-looking.
Averil was doing quite a selling job on Colin McNeil.
‘Craggy as in Ben Lomond?’ I said.
‘Shoulders he’s got, more like the Tower of London.’
Shock; I stared at her. The old gypsy’s words, as Cat Haggard had reported them in her journal. Big as a tower, my ’andsome… It had been in the part of the journal Averil had not read.
‘And abs to die for,’ she said.
I recovered. ‘You speak from experience?’
Nothing like that, she assured me. She’d seen him working out at the gym.
‘What does he do?’
‘Works for the Victorian governor. But there’s talk he may soon be promoted.’ Her eye caught mine. ‘Private secretary to the governor of Tasmania, no less. He knows the state quite well. He should do; he comes from there.’
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