The Governor's House

by J. H. Fletcher

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Need you ask?’

  ‘And Antares?’

  ‘Expected any day.’

  There were horses. He helped her mount. She heard the door of the gaol creak open but they were away. Nothing could catch them now.

  They had ridden fast but it was already light by the time they arrived at Jackson’s Landing. They reined in at the forest edge.

  ‘Wait ’ere,’ Dark said. ‘I’ll go and check all’s clear.’

  Within five minutes he was back. ‘Come on.’

  He left her inside the house, closing the door softly behind him. She stood in the middle of the living room and looked about her. She was stunned by everything that had happened to her. Arrest and imprisonment. The menace of the gallows. Escape and the furious ride through the darkness. Now the peaceful room with its familiar piles of books. No wonder she was stunned.

  A sound made her turn. Mungo stood there.

  ‘Thank God,’ he said.

  She was in his arms, eyes shut, mind shut, terrors forgotten. There was nothing more in life. His warmth. His… tears?

  She wiped his cheeks with gentle fingers. ‘You don’t get rid of me so easily, my dear. But how did you know they had me in the Cascades?’

  ‘I sent someone to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Thank God you did. And then you arranged for Silas to warn me. And Alfred Dark to get me out.’

  ‘I didn’t dare believe I should ever see you again. Until now, in this room.’

  ‘And here I am,’ she said.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Over the next two days Mungo assembled the crew Vincent had recruited on his trip to the docks.

  ‘The choicest set of ruffians you ever saw,’ he told Cat. ‘Most of them have been living rough and every last one is a convict or ex-convict. Some I wouldn’t trust with tuppence. The only thing I insisted on was they should be familiar with ships and the sea.’

  ‘Did anyone vouch for them?’

  ‘Ask that sort of question around the port, everyone will know your business within the hour. That we cannot have.’

  ‘Where will you hide the silver?’

  ‘At the bottom of an old well. It’s forty foot deep and half full of water. They’ll never find it there.’

  ‘Who will sail Antares?’ Because to capture the barque was one thing but to get her downriver without going aground would need different skills.

  ‘Vincent managed to get hold of a man called Robinson, used to be second mate on a barquentine who was transported for smuggling. A hard-looking man, fists like cannonballs, just what we need to keep that gang of cut-throats in line.’

  ‘Aren’t you taking a risk with a crew like that?’

  ‘The whole thing is a risk but there’s no help for it. We can’t pirate Antares with a bunch of lily-livered gentlefolk.’

  ‘What if they try to steal the ship and the silver?’

  ‘I’ll have my own men on board. They’ll be armed but not the crew. They won’t be able to do anything. We’ll off-load the silver at the wharf down there where you, hopefully, will be waiting.’

  ‘Definitely not,’ she said.

  Mungo raised an enquiring eyebrow.

  Catherine had sat demurely in her chair, wine glass in hand, but it was Cat who now tossed off what remained of its contents, stood with a swish and stir of her skirts and went to stand at his side. She stared at the mast of the distant hoy and was very conscious of Mungo’s strong body beside her.

  ‘I shall board that ship with you. Don’t you dare think of leaving me behind.’

  ‘Dunstable said there would be marines on board. There may be a fight. Even blood, perhaps.’

  Her glare was hot enough to set him on fire. ‘You think you can scare me? I was working in the fish-packing sheds as soon as I was tall enough to reach the sorting tables. And I saved your life from Maria Hack, in case you’ve forgotten. You’re not doing this without me.’

  ‘You’ll need more than fists if a marine comes at you with a bayonet. Have you ever handled a revolver?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Then I shall have to teach you.’

  It was a Colt revolver with a six-inch barrel. Cat held it, weighing it in her hand. She swung it up and pointed it, then lowered it again.

  ‘Too heavy for you?’

  She smiled at him. ‘I knew heaving those fish boxes would be good for something. How many bullets does it hold?’

  ‘Five rounds. Point three one calibre.’

  Cat did not know or care what that meant. She had only one concern. ‘If I shoot this marine with a bayonet, will it stop him?’

  ‘Only if you hit him,’ Mungo said. ‘Let’s see how good you are.’

  He took her behind the house and set up five bottles on a bench. He walked Cat ten paces away and filled the chambers of the gun. He handed it to her. ‘See how many you can knock down.’

  The bullets made the gun heavier but it was still manageable. She aimed at the bottles and fired. What a disaster. Five shots and the bottles remained untouched.

  Cat swore, ears ringing. Mungo laughed.

  ‘You’ll soon get the hang of it.’

  He reloaded the revolver and she fired again. Still nothing.

  ‘That marine would have filleted you by now,’ Mungo said.

  ‘There must be something wrong with this gun.’

  ‘Let me try.’

  He took the revolver, reloaded and let fly. Five bottles exploded one by one. Now Cat was really angry.

  ‘Think of pointing your finger at the target when you fire,’ he said.

  This time she got one. The next time three. An hour later, deafened by noise, throat raw from cordite smoke, she hit all five.

  ‘You’ll do,’ Mungo said. ‘But shooting a man is different from shooting a bottle. You won’t go squeamish on me?’

  ‘With Arthur Dunstable’s face on the other end of the barrel?’

  ‘Or fall to pieces if you have to kill someone?’

  ‘I came close to killing a man once,’ Cat said. ‘I was glad after wards I hadn’t but if someone threatened you or me I’d kill them and not feel a thing.’

  He appraised her thoughtfully. ‘I shall have to be careful with you.’

  She smiled. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘It would so easy to fall in love with you.’

  It was like a nail driven into her heart yet she laughed. ‘We can’t have that, can we?’

  That evening, lying with Mungo on the bed and looking out at the red-flushed sky, she told him again that some people called him the devil.

  ‘And what do you think?’

  She slanted her eyes at him. ‘They could be right. Certainly you tempted me. Before I knew you I was dutiful, obedient –’

  ‘Hard to picture,’ he said.

  She put on her haughty look. ‘Dr Morgan wanted to marry me.’

  ‘No doubt it would have been sensible.’

  ‘For Catherine, perhaps. But Cat?’

  ‘Cat would have pined for all the adventures she could no longer have.’

  ‘Cat has always wanted to live,’ she said.

  ‘So have I but I never knew what I was looking for. Now I do.’

  Below them a heron rose from beside the creek. Silhouetted against the red sky, it flew with neck drawn back, wings sculling the air. Cat watched, heart on tiptoe in the silence. ‘And what is it?’

  ‘I have found the other half of myself in you. It gives me huge joy but I know it is not in me to settle to a domestic life. Therefore I say again what I have said before: the day will come when you will leave me, and that fills me with sadness. But it is inevitable.’

  She turned within the shelter of his arm and looked up at him with a tigerish intensity in her face. ‘Then let us live every minute we have,’ she said.

  It was two days later, the evening of 8 June 1858, and that morning they had received word from the lookout Mungo had posted at Pierson’s Point th
at Antares was at the mouth of the Derwent River. Cat had expected him to be delighted but he was not.

  ‘She’s too early,’ he said.

  But an hour later the wind died and his mood changed.

  ‘Ebb tide too,’ he said. ‘With the stream and tide against her and no wind she’ll be going nowhere until the wind picks up. Hopefully that won’t happen until around sunset.’

  ‘Why is that good?’

  More and more Cat was coming to realise how little she understood about the challenge awaiting them.

  ‘If she doesn’t reach Hobart before nightfall she won’t be able to off-load until morning. We’ll have all night to get aboard. It’s the dark of the moon too. Perfect for us.’

  ‘I heard there’s a frigate in port,’ Cat said.

  ‘The Hercules. A pity but it can’t be helped. It just means we’ll have to get Antares unloaded and out to sea before daybreak.’ He looked at Cat. ‘Which raises another question. There’ll be hell to pay after she disappears. They’ll send Hercules after her but that won’t be the end of it. With that much silver missing there’ll be search parties checking every farm and property for miles.’

  ‘You said it would be quite safe at the bottom of the old well.’

  ‘So it will. Even if you lean over with a lantern it’s dark after the first six feet. Tell them it’s fathoms deep and they’ll move on quickly enough. But we have to work out what to do about you. We can hardly hide you under twenty feet of water and you can’t go back to Aberystwyth. That’s one of the first places they’ll look.’

  ‘Let’s capture Antares first,’ Cat said. ‘We can worry what to do about me afterwards. Assuming I survive.’

  ‘Assuming any of us survive,’ he said.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Joanne

  I left Colin with Marcus Smeeton at the Governor’s House and drove home. It was four in the afternoon by the time I got there. Flowers, tormented by the gales, didn’t do well on the seaward side of the house but by the back door a rose bush was covered in yellow blooms.

  I spoke kindly to it as I went indoors. I went into my study, sat at my desk and phoned Averil.

  It was not a good time for her. She was scheduled to fly out any day and just going into a meeting, but she promised to phone me back and that evening she did.

  ‘I am going bananas here,’ she said. ‘Every halfwit in creation is telling me what I must and mustn’t do in China. I mustn’t argue with the police. I mustn’t insult the memory of Chairman Mao. I mustn’t mention the Tiananmen Square massacre… Am I likely to do any of these things?’

  Frenzy on the hoof: that was my old mate Averil Gillis.

  ‘Someone gave me a Mandarin phrase book this morning. First thing I saw when I opened it: wo de xingli hai mei dao.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I’ve lost my luggage.’

  ‘Could be handy,’ I said and listened to the sounds of incipient apoplexy from the other end of the phone. ‘How about: Take me to the doctor I’m having a heart attack?’

  I had always been able to calm her down; now I could almost feel her relax.

  ‘Yeah, well… So to what do I owe this pleasure?’

  ‘You said you had an idea about the notebook. We agreed I’d phone when I got back.’

  ‘So we did. How was your trip?’

  ‘Exciting.’

  ‘Really?’ Her voice was like cream. ‘That good?’

  ‘That bad, more like.’ I told her what had happened. That was the thing about Averil; never mind how frantic she was, she always had time to listen.

  ‘My God!’ She was always quick to get the point too. ‘How did they know about the notebook?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘You surely don’t think that I –’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ The thing was I had thought it. How could I think anything else when she and I had been the only ones who knew of its existence? ‘Did you mention it to anyone?’

  ‘You do think it’s me,’ Averil said.

  ‘Of course I don’t.’

  ‘Then why did you say –?’

  I decided briskness was the order of the day. ‘There are enough mysteries without that.’

  ‘You could be in danger if these men are still after you,’ Averil said.

  ‘It’s so stupid. It’s not as though I know where the wretched thing is, anyway.’

  ‘What are you doing about it?’

  ‘I have everything under control.’

  ‘Meaning what, exactly?’ Evasion never worked with Averil.

  ‘I’ve written a note to remind myself to lock my doors at night.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve done?’

  ‘What do you suggest?’

  ‘Where’s Colin?’

  ‘He’s tied up with Marcus Smeeton most of the time. His predecessor.’

  ‘Tied up with him at night?’

  ‘You are surely not suggesting he should sleep over? That would be most improper.’

  ‘You are surely not suggesting you haven’t slept with him already?’ she said.

  I wasn’t going to tell her I hadn’t; she wouldn’t believe me anyway. ‘I have absolutely no comment about that.’

  ‘Then you have slept with him already.’

  ‘I did not say that.’

  ‘Joanne, this is no time to be worrying about what the neighbours may say.’

  ‘Seeing my only neighbours are seals,’ I said, ‘I doubt they would have any particular view about Colin McNeil. Maybe the odd albatross,’ I added.

  Averil had no patience with either seals or albatrosses. ‘Get him in there. This is serious.’

  ‘I know it is.’ Didn’t I just? It still seemed surreal but I hadn’t dreamt the business in the Walls of Jerusalem and what had happened once could easily happen again, with more dire consequences. ‘I’ll ask him,’ I said.

  ‘Tell him to bring his shillelagh.’

  ‘I think that’s Irish.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘Maybe a claymore.’

  ‘Isn’t that a mine?’

  Military hardware was not our line. The mysterious notebook, however, was. Time to get down to business.

  ‘Tell me your thinking about the notebook,’ I said.

  ‘The number clusters in the notebook make it obvious we are looking at a book code. Agreed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But we have no idea what book she was using?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Try the journal,’ she said.

  Like a beam of light in the darkness. ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s the one book we know she had.’

  Excitement stirred me like a spoon. ‘And if she hid it in plain sight, like in all the good detective stories –’

  ‘But used the code in case the wrong person found it –’

  ‘My God,’ I said. ‘I think you may be on to something.’

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ she said.

  ‘When are you leaving?’

  ‘They still have to confirm the date. Are you going to look at it now?’

  ‘Straightaway.’

  ‘Ring me when you’ve had a chance to find out what we’ve got.’

  ‘What about Sammy?’

  ‘Sammy can wait. This is important. But ring Colin first okay? Don’t forget.’

  ‘What do I tell him?’

  ‘The truth. He’ll be there if he thinks you’re in danger.’

  ‘You sound very sure of that.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Have you been talking to him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘You mean about you? I said you were the nicest person I knew –’

  ‘Nice?’ I said. ‘You told him I was nice?’

  ‘I told him you were nice and very smart and my best friend and according to hearsay evidence the finest screw in the business.’

  ‘You never did.’

  ‘Why do you think
he came running?’

  ‘I don’t believe you said anything of the sort.’

  ‘He came, though, didn’t he? And will do so again, if you’re patient.’

  Like they say, it takes one to know one.

  ‘I’ll ring you later,’ I said. ‘And I hope I catch you in the middle of something exciting.’

  She laughed and hung up. Trouble with that woman, I never knew when she was being serious or not. I took her advice, though. I phoned Colin on his mobile. The finest screw in the business, eh? Something to live up to, sure enough.

  He answered and I did what Averil had said; I told him the truth: that stuck out here on the edge of a three-hundred-foot cliff with my nearest neighbour half a kilometre away I was a tad vulnerable if the boys from the Walls decided to drop by for a chat.

  ‘I feel I may be a bit exposed,’ said I. Nudge, nudge. Catherine Haggard was not the only one who knew how to use code. ‘I thought maybe you’d like to come and keep me company.’ Poor helpless me.

  ‘I’ll be an hour,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll cook us some supper.’

  While I waited I dug out the notebook and journal, a pad of paper and pencil. Once again I looked through the notebook. I read the two anecdotes: the one about the friend or lover called Philip; the other about the family called Lamb. I hadn’t a clue who either of them was. There were a couple of Shakespeare quotes and a series of numbers written in groups of three.

  I wrote down the numbers. Each cluster presumably represented the page of the journal, the line on the page and the word in the line. So far so good but there was a problem. The word identified by this method was never the word in the message; they were always several words apart. The trouble was there was no rule about the size of the interval: it could be three words or ten or any number you cared to name, so without knowing the interval you couldn’t read the message anyway.

  Again I examined the notebook but saw nothing to give me a clue. Or did I? One of the quotations was from Shakespeare’s Tempest: Full fathom five thy father lies.

  Averil thought the quotations might be concealed messages. Could five be the interval?

  I went back to the journal and started counting. I played around with the first number cluster and came up with the word DWELLING. Straight out of a quotation from Corinthians. I wrote it down. I turned to the next set of figures. Word selected: AT. Again it came from one of the quotations in the text. I worked through them and found the rest did too. Surely that must have some significance? What it might be I had no idea but I jotted down each quotation as I came to it, just in case. When I’d finished I looked at what I’d got.