Death and the Running Patterer: A Curious Murder Mystery

by Robin Adair

  “Get to the point, Dunne,” said the governor testily. “This is not a damned schoolroom.”

  “My apologies, Excellency,” murmured Dunne. “Your thoughts, Dr. Halloran?”

  The minister nodded. “Your hunter, of course, was Nimrod.”

  “Exactly. Nimrod. Which, backward, is Dormin.”

  Their Nimrod nodded approvingly, adding, “They say his tomb is in Damascus and that rain never falls on it.”

  “So, we have captured the angel of death,” said Mr. Hall sadly.

  Miss Dormin looked at him intently. “Yes, sir, but the zuzim verse is not quite finished, you know.”

  He frowned at her as she continued.

  “I’m sure you believe in God, in a higher being?”

  He bridled. “Of course!”

  “Well then. The last line—I know it comes first, but it is the end of the cycle—the last line of the riddle has the Most Holy killing the angel of death . . .”

  “The hangman will do that job for the Most Holy,” interrupted Darling coldly.

  “I won’t hang!” said Miss Dormin fiercely. “I know what would happen. I won’t be forced into canvas underdraws to save my executioner offense as I drop through the trap and lose control of my bladder and bowels. I won’t have any dirty man’s hands pulling at my thighs to finally strangle me if he’s misjudged the drop and failed to break my neck cleanly. I know that happens.” She turned the pistol to her own breast. “I never said who would die!”

  The patterer’s satchel was beside him. He swooped it up and hurled it at Miss Dormin, to distract her. But his desperate move failed. The bag deflected her aim, but only downward. In reflex, she squeezed the trigger.

  The crash of firing echoed through the stone-walled room and battered the eardrums of the shocked witnesses. As the smoke cleared, Rachel Dormin slid to the floor. When Dunne reached her, so much blood was already pumping from the area of her thighs, and so fast, that her blue dress was soaking with a glistening stain. The very fabric seemed to pulse.

  The patterer moved in and bent low. Her face was contorted in agony and blood oozed through her fingers as she pressed her hands to her thigh and weakly tore at the dress.

  “You could have got away, Rachel,” cried Dunne. “I tried to warn you. Doctor, help her, for God’s sake!”

  Owens pushed the patterer aside and knelt beside the dying woman.

  Those who were nearest heard her say, “Do you want to save me for the noose?”

  The doctor held her hand and looked up. “The ball has hit the femoral artery. It may even have gone right through the thigh, without breaking the bone. But there’s no way of staunching the flow. She’s lost, I’m afraid.”

  Only the clock broke the hushed deathwatch.

  Dunne took her limp hand from Thomas Owens’s grasp and squeezed it.

  She gazed up and smiled crookedly through her pain. “Do you remember my goats? . . .” Then she fell back and lay still.

  The doctor felt for a pulse, shook his head, then gently closed her eyes.

  THE GOVERNOR TOOK charge while Shadforth and Crotty stolidly surveyed the scene; they were no strangers to violent death. The civilians, however, were shattered. Even the usually blustering firebrand Wentworth was pale and silent.

  “Colonel,” ordered Darling. “You will ensure that there is no record of this matter. Put your heel on any loose talk. It seems that no one has heard the shot—keep it that way. In a moment, put a sentry on the corridor to keep others out. The rest of you—except for Captain Rossi and Dunne—will disperse quietly. The whole matter is now closed. I think you will find it in your best interests to remain silent.”

  There was a murmur of agreement, punctuated by nervous nods.

  Nicodemus Dunne sat shaking, with his head in his hands, saying brokenly, “I killed her. But I had to do it.”

  Captain Rossi at last eased him to his feet.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  For secrets are edged tools,

  And must be kept from children and from fools.

  —John Dryden, Sir Martin Mar-All (1667)

  “LET US ALL GO OUTSIDE FOR A WHILE,” SAID ROSSI. “DR. OWENS will attend to Miss Dormin.” He gently ushered the patterer out of sight of her body.

  “I want her, Rossi,” said Dunne. “At least I can see that she’s not shoveled like a dog into a pauper’s hole at the Sandhills. Or buried in a lime pit.” He seized the captain’s shoulder. “And Owens—or any other surgeon—can’t have her to rip open on the anatomizing table.”

  Rossi shrugged him off. “You shall have her. Intact. Never fear.” He turned as the governor called him into another room. “Wait here for me.”

  The patterer did as he was told. All other members of the party had drifted off, shaken and mindful of Darling’s stern admonition to hold their tongues about the day’s events.

  The barracks hallway was silent. Only the armed soldier standing warily at one end and the fading smell of burnt gunpowder in the air testified to the fact that anything out of the ordinary had happened.

  After some time, the governor bustled back into the corridor, alone. He gave Dunne a grim glance, nodded curtly and marched off past the watchful soldier, who stiffened to attention.

  IN THE ROOM, Darling had been sharp with Rossi.

  “Does he know?”

  “Dunne?”

  “Of course, Dunne!”

  “If you mean what I think you do, Excellency, then the answer is that he doesn’t. I’m sure of it.”

  “Doesn’t he wonder where the money comes from, why he was given the status of a Special, why I haven’t taken away his ticket—even had him flogged—for his disrespect?”

  “It seems not.”

  “The question now is, can he be trusted to keep his mouth shut about this business—in particular, the business of all our private affairs? Not that we have anything nefarious to hide.”

  The captain nodded sagely.

  “However.” The governor waved a manicured hand. “It is better for all if a veil is drawn over some events in the past. I think that is already understood by the gentlemen who were here today—and you can reinforce the concept, I’m sure. All except Dunne. He can be silenced on two fronts, I believe. First, tell him he can have the girl’s body in exchange for silence.”

  Rossi did not think it wise to mention that he had already given away that advantage, so he simply nodded. “And the second front, sir?”

  “Tell him the darkness in his own past. See how he likes the idea of people knowing his family secrets!”

  “Do you think that wise?”

  “I do.” The governor rose. “You can keep me out of it, of course.”

  Of course, thought Rossi. That’s how Darling keeps his hands so clean. But he said nothing, just bowed slightly.

  “Oh, and Rossi.” Darling paused. “See if you can track down the man from the 45th who talked out of turn.”

  With that he was gone. He missed Rossi’s small smile.

  CAPTAIN ROSSI BECKONED the patterer into the side room from which the governor had just stormed. He motioned him to a chair and sat down opposite him.

  “You’ve made some bad enemies here today.”

  “It had to be done.” Dunne shrugged and looked bleakly ahead, with the thousand-mile stare of the dying or the hopelessly distressed. I gave her the chance to escape, you know. Yesterday, when we talked. I made it clear to her that the game was up. I asked her here today, but she didn’t have to come. There are plenty of ships a pretty girl could have slipped away on. The others—even you—think I lured her here to her final exposure. But I think she really did just get sick and tired of the whole sorry business. Perhaps she simply came to the end of her madness and anger. She genuinely did regret killing Elsie and Muller, I’m sure.” He rubbed a hand wearily across his face. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway. There are too many unhappy memories here. I’m going home. To England.”

  Rossi sighed. “Ah, well. Strangely enough, that�
��s what the—what I want to talk to you about. The truth is that you can’t go home, lad.”

  The words penetrated Dunne’s mind after a moment. “Why the devil not?”

  “Because,” replied Rossi, “home doesn’t want you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Consider,” said the captain gently, “most of us here are embarrassments to England. I know I am, with my funny ways and accent, and the baggage I carry professionally. But you—you are particularly embarrassing.”

  “Why, in God’s name?”

  Rossi paused. “Because, lad, enough people believe you are the king’s nephew.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Curses are like young chickens, they always come home to roost.

  —Robert Southey, The Curse of Kehama (1810)

  NICODEMUS DUNNE GAPED. THEN HE LAUGHED. “THE KING’S nephew! Jesus, Captain, am I hearing you right?”

  Rossi nodded. “Yes. A bastard, certainly, but still his nephew. Come to that, if we lived in earlier, less enlightened times, and if somehow you were legitimized and acknowledged—and if certain other people died—why, you’d be the heir to the throne!”

  Dunne shook his head, like a man mazed by too much rum. “This is madness, man. That means my father would be one of the royal dukes. Which one?”

  “The rumors say Cumberland sired you. And that you were born in Weymouth in the summer of 1800.”

  Dunne barely took in Rossi’s last words as his mind raced. Wasn’t Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, a notorious man-lover? Which deviation—most whispered it, though others recklessly spoke and wrote it openly—may have led to murder. For many years he had been popularly dubbed “Deadly Ernest,” after one of his male servants was discovered with his throat cut. A coroner found for suicide, despite the clear evidence that the victim could not have inflicted the wound upon himself. Most chose to believe that the man had died resisting the duke’s overtures or that it was an amorous affair gone wrong, terribly wrong. Either way, poor bugger, thought Dunne.

  Then his attention turned back to what Rossi had been saying. He stared at the captain. Weymouth. The year 1800. “Are you saying that Mrs. Dunne, respectable Mrs. Dunne, steadfast wife of an honorably retired army officer, was not just my guardian’s wife? That, as well, she was a royal paramour and my mother?”

  Rossi shifted uncomfortably. “No, she wasn’t your real mother.”

  “Then who was?”

  “Well, the rumors say it was the princess Sophia.”

  It took moments to sink in. “But you’re talking about brother and sister. Christ, that’s incest!” He paused. “How could the princess keep such a secret?” After all, bastards by royal males were usually acknowledged in some way, but this fantastic story . . .

  “Oh,” said Rossi. “She went into a long retreat from public and Court view—that’s how Weymouth came into the picture—and everyone, even her father, the old king (and he wasn’t yet mad enough not to have seen the growing problem), was fobbed off with the story that she had left London suffering from dropsy. But a thing like that . . . well, enough people know that secret, or at least some of it.”

  “How do you know I’m the one?” insisted Dunne.

  “Yes, well, the Palace and all governments, from Pitt’s then to Wellington’s now, have kept an eye on you. In fact, they could have saved you from your troubles over Caroline’s funeral. The main parties are alive, you know. But, in the end, someone decided it was a stroke of fortune—you know, out of sight, out of mind. At least, that’s what all would like. And so far it has worked out thus.”

  The patterer was ashen and growing more and more agitated.

  The captain raised a hand. “Calm yourself. It may not be as bad as that. Other rumors say General Thomas Garth was the father.”

  Garth! Dunne remembered the name and the man from his childhood. Christ! What a day—what a mess!

  Rossi was still talking. “Either way, it must remain a secret here. It is a powerful weapon that already hasn’t served you badly. Darling daren’t push you too hard—he’ll treat you with respect, just in case, even if with his usual disdain. And he’ll keep secretly slipping you money. Don’t you see, however, that in England there are enemies of the king—men who want a republic—who would, if they got wind of your story, offer it as an example of how corrupt, depraved and ultimately worthless the monarchy is? Then there are king’s men who would kill you to get you out of the way. Other men would exploit you here, too, or kill you for their own reasons. What of the thousands of convicts and Emancipists who are Irish and loathe the Crown with a passion?”

  A vision of Brian O’Bannion flashed before Dunne’s eyes. Would his friendship stay warm if he knew the truth or would it turn to hatred? He looked at Rossi and said calmly, “I will try to forget I ever heard those names. As far as I’m concerned, we never had this conversation.” But deep down he could not help but wonder if the bad seed of incest really ran in his blood.

  There was a knock on the door. “Come,” said the captain.

  Thomas Owens entered and looked at the patterer. “I’ve cleaned her up as best I can. She looks as though she’s sleeping.” He paused. “You were right, you know. I’ll be careful and still useful.”

  Dunne thanked him and held out his hand. After hesitating, the doctor took it in his, as always, gloved fingers. The patterer nodded to Rossi and walked toward the door leading to a Sydney that could never know his secrets.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Now cease, my lute! This is the last

  Labour, that thou and I shall waste;

  And ended is what we begun:

  Now is this song both sung and past;

  My lute! be still, for I have done.

  —Sir Thomas Wyatt, “My Lute Awake” (1557)

  DEATH HAD COME EARLY FOR MISS DORMIN, EVEN IN A WORLD IN which the average life span was (according to those men who conned such things) fifty-eight years. In particular, ill-treated servants, convicts and women in childbirth died too soon. But the most cruel mortality figures were for infants. Survive birth and childhood, however—say, overcome croup, scarlet fever and the like and attain the grand age of ten—and then, with further luck, reach adulthood, and you could live out the allotted three score and ten, perhaps more. Such luck was elusive, though.

  People countered the fearful omnipresence of death with morbid gallows humor, whistling in the dark, even at the graveside. Dr. Peter Cunningham, dogged by death in his trade, liked to repeat an epitaph he found in a Parramatta graveyard: Ye who wish to lie here,

  Drink Squire’s beer!

  Even the pioneer brewer thus maligned apparently saw humor in the slight and would repeat it regularly.

  Funerals in the colony had many facets. Few bodies went to an ornate, or any kind of vault. Some, especially away from towns, went into the handiest hole, which was often unmarked; perhaps an impermanent wooden cross might be raised, at best a cairn of rocks.

  Even in town, interment could be a casual affair. There was no call for a doctor to certify death. Someone had only to register a death and deliver a body for burial, not necessarily in that order.

  Some ceremonies, however, were grand affairs, with mourning mummers and black-decked hearses and horses. When old D’Arcy Wentworth, who may or may not have been a highwayman, had died the previous year, hundreds of people from Sydney traveled miles to follow his cortege in Parramatta. In Van Diemen’s Land, an acting governor was dismissed for spending 800 pounds on his late superior’s burial. In Sydney, a lady publican requested that her coffin be accompanied to the cemetery by a dozen whitegowned virgin barmaids. They raked up two, with few questions asked.

  Rachel Dormin—and now that would always be her name—went to rest very simply.

  IN THE DUSK, a handcart, with its box-shaped contents shrouded in canvas, was wheeled by a lone figure to an empty jetty at Jack-the-Miller’s Point.

  Between the Military Barracks and the spot where the cart now rested, it had
halted only once in its progress, at a carpenter’s shop in Cumberland Street.

  There’s that damned name to haunt me again, thought the sweating patterer. “I want it in cedar, no cheap pine,” he directed the carpenter.

  They found one ready-made that was to his liking. Dunne then borrowed a hammer and nails, and the use of a shed. He already had a pick and a shovel in the cart.

  Now, at the jetty, he waited patiently. About thirty minutes passed before a splash announced the approach of a skiff. It came from the northern side of the water, from Murdering Point. As it pulled up to the jetty, lamplight helped reveal its occupant. A dark-skinned old man in a top hat was at the oars. Looking up from the boat bobbing on the tide, he waited for Dunne to speak.

  For several moments, the younger man was silent, gazing into emptiness. It’s strange, he thought. Or is it just right and proper? For all the twists and turns, the biblical clue and both riddles had ended truly. By and large. The men who had hurt a woman whose fruit thus departed from her, they were surely punished. And take the zuzim parable. If there were a God, then, as Miss Dormin ensured, the Most Holy did slay the angel of death.

  He considered, too, the children’s rhyme that Dr. Halloran had likened to the zuzim theme. And he noted wryly that their story—his and Rachel’s—had now ended at John Leighton’s mill. And wasn’t that, after all, a house that Jack built?

  He finally spoke. “Commodore, I need that favor repaid now. I need to go to an island.”

  The old man nodded.

  ON ANOTHER, SUNNIER day, Nicodemus Dunne stood in easy silence on the harbor shore near Lieutenant Dawes’s Battery. Alongside him, in his familiar eye-catching breeches, jacket and streamered hat, stood William King. “I often walk out along the South Head Road, to the Light, and I look out,” said the Flying Pieman dreamily. “I know she’s out there somewhere.”