Death and the Running Patterer (32 page)

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Authors: Robin Adair

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Darling nodded. He saw that his flint was at full cock of the dog’s-head as he focused his eye along the barrel at the lawyer’s shirt. He made only a minor adjustment, then the muzzle was true at the target. He inhaled deeply, let out half the breath, held it, then squeezed the trigger.
Wentworth staggered, but only in reaction to the explosion. He, too, had not taken a ball.
“I am satisfied, gentlemen,” said Halloran. “Are you?”
Both men nodded, Wentworth rather shakily.
“Then let us depart.”
Wentworth’s bravado quickly returned. He soon seemed to regard his failure as bad luck, Darling’s as bad aim. He was heard to mutter, “Not that much better a shot than that damned Dumaresq!”
But the governor did not take the bait. He simply smiled tightly.
With no further discussion, the parties returned to the waiting boats and were rowed back to Sydney Cove. All wanted the matter dead and buried. They would be hard put to explain why they had been involved in a forbidden enterprise that may have killed the king’s representative.
Even
being
that very representative wouldn’t help.
THE PATTERER, OF course, was not able to piece together the whole strange story. He hadn’t been given all the pieces. Dr. Halloran was certainly reticent about some details of the duel. As he spoke, he jiggled in his pocket two small spheres of lead and considered that at least one good thing—perhaps two lives—had come out of his transportation. During the long voyage out, he had instructed shackled shipmates in matters that required his learning. In turn, several had tutored him in their skills as “fingersmiths,” who picked pockets; “fogle-hunters,” who worked miracles lifting handkerchiefs; and “bung-divers,” who purloined purses.
On the recent field of honor it had been child’s play for Halloran to palm the ball in the shuffle each time he feigned loading the pistol. He reassured his conscience that he had not lied at any stage. Did not the
Book of Common Prayer
record rewards to “he who hath used no deceit in his tongue”? He didn’t recall anything at all in there about deceit with one’s fingers.
But the patterer could not understand why the governor had listened to the others tell the tale of this rather shameful incident with such an uncharacteristic smile.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
They [the natives] are the carriers of news and fish;
the gossips of the town; the loungers on the quay.
They know everybody; and understand the nature
of everybody’s business.
—Judge Barron Field,
Geographical Memoirs on New South Wales
(1825, reprinted from the
London Magazine
)
 
 
 
 
 
 
“
Y
OU KNOW, OF COURSE,” SAID CAPTAIN CROTTY, “THAT WE WILL deny this conversation ever took place.”
“Naturally,” agreed Nicodemus Dunne.
“How did you know?” asked the governor, ignoring the pained looks from Colonel Shadforth, who had moved from puzzlement to anger as the tale of the abortive duel unfolded.
“How did you get to the island?” countered the patterer.
“We saw no one on the way,” insisted Wentworth testily. “And no one saw us there, or leaving.”
“No,” agreed Dunne. “You wouldn’t see a servant, least of all a black one, would you?”
“Oh, that damned waterman,” spat out Captain Crotty.
The patterer nodded. “Also, in the second boat, one of his sons. And natives followed you and saw it all. They watch us all the time, you know. And they tell me things. Don’t even
think
of punishing these people. Cultivating their confidence is far wiser. And, as you can see, rewarding.
“Enough,” he continued, more mildly. “We are agreed on one thing: You didn’t conspire to kill the blacksmith. But did one of you slip away and act independently? I was interested to learn that Madame Greene was also on the loose that night. She wasn’t with you and my spies lost sight of her—which, in itself, is unusual. She was a prime suspect for having slain the blacksmith—until she became a victim. So perhaps we’ll never know her movements that night. As I’ve already indicated, if we know the identity of the killer of any one of our victims, we have the killer of them all.
“Could, perhaps, our slayer have needed to cover the murder he really desired with a deadly smokescreen? Something I learned about the
New World
printer suggested that he could have been a threat to most of you here today, a menace that had to be removed. You see, I found that he was a blackmailer, an extortioner.
“At first I had suspicions that there may have been something of value to him in the past of our Captain Rossi, but everyone seems to know his colorful history. Although I must admit I was, and still am, puzzled as to why he professes not to know the nom de guerre of his old regiment, the Duke of Wellington’s ‘Fighting Fifth.’”
Rossi interposed. “That’s easy, my boy. I served with the 5th only to ’03—long before Old Nosey took a fancy to them and bestowed the name.”
“The point, Dunne, get to it!” snapped Darling.
The patterer smiled and bowed slightly. “Dr. Halloran.”
The black-suited editor gave a start.
“After the murder of Will Abbot, you professed charity among brothers by claiming to have helped him set up shop. But why would you have supported him? Hadn’t you dismissed him for extortion? And, in truth, you had a reason to want to be rid of him more permanently: He was yet more unwelcome business competition.
The Gleaner
is failing, isn’t it? You are selling only about 200 copies to your rivals’ 600 or more each. Isn’t that true? Didn’t you desperately want to ‘kill off’ the opposition? And perhaps Abbot made threats to air in public a scandal about your son. Yes, indeed. The man would be a bad enemy to have—alive!”
DUNNE PAUSED TO let his words sink in before continuing. “Then there is you, Mr. Wentworth. A talking parrot led me to suspect you of the same murder.”
The lawyer gasped, started to his feet, then fell back into a strangled silence as the charge rolled on.
“During the investigation, I happened across this winged ‘witness’ in the home of Frances Cox, where I happen to lodge. Your lady was there with your daughter, Timmie. In passing, Mrs. Cox remarked that the child would be three ‘come Christmas.’
“When I wondered later what Abbot could possibly have known to your disadvantage—and, pray, don’t explode; I have applied my jaundiced eye to everyone I thought possible—I idly pursued the matter of the child, and something did not seem to add up. Church records show that Thomasine—Timmie—was baptized at St. James on January 15, 1826, as the child of ‘Sarah Cox and W. C. Wentworth.’ Other documents show Timmie was born on December 18, 1825—hence the Christmas birthday.
“Now, I won’t duel with you—I think we’ve had enough of that—for making the following observations. You appeared for Miss Cox in her breach-of-promise action in May 1825. Your plaint was that she was a respectable girl whose ‘reputation had been injured,’ a girl who ‘kept good company and was never out late at night.’ The court supported her case. My ten—no, nine—fingers point to a certain discrepancy of two months.”
By this time, Wentworth was choking with rage.
“Now,” continued the patterer calmly, “personal affairs are nothing to do with anyone here. But what would the lords of our legal system make of a plaintiff who appeared to perjure herself?—and of a lawyer who, it seems, had already impregnated this paragon of virtue? Perhaps nothing. But again, perhaps, a blackmailer might find it fertile ground.”
Mr. Wentworth, though still angry, was pale and silent.
“YOUR EXCELLENCY COMES to my attention, too,” said the patterer next.
Darling raised a hand in sudden anger, then let it drop and sat back, stone-faced.
Unruffled, the patterer continued. “You, sir, are all-powerful here and could have had any of the victims disposed of without necessarily lifting a finger. Although, as we have seen, your finger is not above personally pulling a trigger. But that tavern private, or the slaughterman, would have had no power to harm you. And what could a whoremistress and her maid have done to deserve death? The Lumber Yard murder … Well, the smith
had
been in the 45th.”
Darling looked more animated.
“But I’ll deal with that in a moment. The
New World
printer is, again, another story. He was, I repeat, an extortioner. That fact raised the specter of a threat from your past before your rise to vice-regal eminence. But, how are you, the highest in the land, vulnerable?
“Well, in your battle with the Emancipist political forces, especially Mr. Wentworth and Mr. Hall, you must maintain the high ground that being plenipotentiary bestows upon you. What if there were something in your past that would diminish you in the eyes of the Exclusives and thus decrease your power? Something that here and now both snobs and levelers could hold against you and make political capital from? Facts that could alter the delicate social climate here? The shocks could ripple all the way to the Palace. And you do cherish that knighthood. If a blackmailer
had
learned this secret—how could he be dealt with? Paying off is rarely the answer. It never ends. Shall I go on?”
Ralph Darling shrugged grimly. “If you must.”
“Then, to put it bluntly,” said Dunne, “you, sir, have not always been an officer and a gentleman.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
I now feel that I have reached a point of this narrative at which every reader will be startled into positive disbelief.
—Edgar Allan Poe, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845)
 
 
 
 
 
 
T
HERE WERE GASPS, THEN DEADLY SILENCE, BROKEN ONLY WHEN the patterer continued. He studiously avoided Captain Rossi’s bland, innocent gaze.
“The Army Lists would show that Ralph Darling first became a junior officer in the 45th Regiment in May 1793. What is not widely known is that some years earlier he had joined its ranks as a private soldier in keeping with family tradition.” He looked at Darling. “You joined your father’s regiment in Grenada, as did your brother, Henry. You were listed on the unit’s muster as privates from June 25, ’86, to June 24, ’88. You became—forever to some—Wellington’s ‘scum of the earth.’”

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