Part 5 (1/2)
That was Sunday. Which meant church. And cricket, of course.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
e sempre bene Il sospettare un poco in questo mondo.
(It is always better, in this world, To be a little suspicious.) -Lorenzo Da Ponte, libretto for Mozart's Cos fan tutte (1790)
SEVEN BLOCKS BACK ACROSS THE TOWN FROM THE HOSPITAL, ON George Street, magistrates' courts and a police office now stood under an elegant dome at the southern end of an area called Market Square, which had been laid out eighteen years earlier.
Admiring the building for which he was headed, the patterer mused that, ironically but in the best traditions of the colony, this home of thieves had been designed by a criminal, a pardoned forger named Francis Greenway.
The courts had risen, but the cl.u.s.ter of milling people through which Nicodemus Dunne worked his way still had unfinished business in the area. When the locals had completed their day's duties, there would be an almost carnival atmosphere in and around the markets, which stayed open until late on Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day nights. As well as stalls offering fruit, vegetables, meat and poultry, there were general stalls to tempt visitors, who were also entertained by jugglers, dancers, gypsy musicians, wandering food-sellers and peddlers. And there would be, of course, pickpocketers and pimps procuring for the town's many brothels.
Some of the crowd were already bent on having a drink or more at nearby hotels. They would ”work and burst,” a wry saying that meant that after a week's labor they would spend all their earnings on one long binge.
Others would pause to be entertained-rather than educated as the authorities intended-by the sight of wretches sentenced either to the large wooden pillory or to the stocks nearby. Dunne saw that this time the four stocks, wooden frames with holes for imprisoning ankles and wrists, were empty. Sometimes the stocks were even used as flogging restraints, when the iron triangles were too busy.
The pillory, bars atop posts with apertures for prisoners' hands and heads, and wide enough to accommodate two victims, now confined only one poor soul. One of his ears was bloodied, having been nailed to the frame, an additional punishment meted out for anything ranging from perjury to selling underweight bread.
It was small comfort, but Dunne knew the prisoner's ordeal would be over by nightfall. He would be free of the strength-sapping and muscle-wrenching suspension and inactivity, and from the intermittent showers of market refuse from jeering bystanders. The patterer had once heard the punishment described as ”a civilized crucifixion.”
At least prisoners here were not left out overnight, he thought, even if only to protect them from the rats in the marketplace or those from the abandoned burial ground next door, which bred among the often-exposed old graves, disturbed only by thugs and robbers. A fence kept out rooting pigs, but not these rats, which literally rose from the dead.
Deep in his gloomy thoughts, the young man b.u.mped into Captain Rossi on the steps of the columned entrance to the law offices.
”Ah, Dunne,” said the policeman. ”Can we meet in half an hour in the taproom?” He pointed toward the Market House Hotel.
This suggestion suited the patterer. He had neglected his pattering work of late and welcomed the opportunity of a captive audience again. In the crowded bar he was soon busy.
To a group of sunburned men in long smocks, clearly farmers in town with their produce or animals, he retold from one of his newspapers the story of the b.l.o.o.d.y and brutal end to a dogfight at Brickfield village. Two bull terriers had forced a stalemate when they sank their teeth into each other and neither would let go. To prove his charge would fight on in any circ.u.mstances, one owner had chopped off the animal's feet. He lost his wager.
Dunne then sold an advertis.e.m.e.nt to a drinker. He helped him with a prepared doc.u.ment that needed only names and dates filled in. There was always great call for this form. The stock advice read: I the undersigned do hereby Caution the Public, not to give credit to my Wife _____, as I will not be answerable for any debt she may contract, she having left my house on the _____ instant, without any cause whatsoever, and which she has repeatedly done.
At the end was room for a name and date. The newspaper's rate was eight lines for two and six plus a penny per extra line. The patterer charged the man for ten lines; two s.h.i.+llings eight pence. He could keep sixpence of that for himself, and charge the man threepence for taking the notice to the printer and making sure it appeared.
Next, he related to drinkers how ”Jeremiah Gerraty, in possession of a proboscis highly carbuncled, was charged with reveling in Baccha.n.a.lian joys, till Morpheus muzzled him and laid him on his back in the middle of George Street. For this, two hours' lounge in the stocks.”
To a group of women smoking and drinking together, away from their men, he shared the authorities' regret that ”We have no bathing place for the fair s.e.x of Sydney. At present females are debarred from this enjoyment, which in many cases is necessary to restore health.”
The women showed more interest when he alerted them to the fact that J. Wyatt's cheap wholesale and retail warehouse had just received Leghorn bonnets at twenty-five s.h.i.+llings and upward, children's beaver hats and bonnets with feathers, twelve and six each, and ladies' white stays, ten to twenty-five s.h.i.+llings per pair.
As always lately, he avoided relating any of the small stories that referred, with details officially played down, to the three recent murders.
He had finished his recitations and ordered his first gla.s.s of beer when, over the sea of straw, beaver and kangaroo-skin hats, he saw a familiar face heading his way. Nicodemus Dunne was pleased. He liked Alexander Harris, an educated and intelligent man who described himself as an emigrant mechanic, and whose shrewd opinions the patterer valued.
As he approached his friend, Harris politely refused an invitation to drink from a man he did not know who was already at the bar. When the man had gone, the mechanic declared, ”I can't help observing a remarkable peculiarity common to them all-there is no offensive obtrusiveness about their civility; every man seems to consider himself just on a level with all the rest, and so quite content either to be sociable or not, as the circ.u.mstances of the moment indicate as most proper.”
”That's quite a mouthful, and rather a philosophical turn of mind for a Sat.u.r.day in a taproom,” Dunne remarked. Yet at the same time he wondered if this were true.
Harris nodded. ”I only have a moment, but, yes, I have been thinking greatly on my fellow man, hoping that the lot of all may improve. I simply cannot get out of my mind a disturbing experience I just had in Bridge Street, at the Lumber Yard. I had to pa.s.s the triangles, where they had been flogging incessantly for hours. I saw a man walk across the yard with blood that had run from his lacerated back squas.h.i.+ng out of his shoes at every step he took. A dog was licking the blood off the triangles ... and the scourger's left foot had worn a deep hole in the ground by the violence with which he whirled himself round on it to strike.”
Harris ended this grim tale and excused himself for it, just as Captain Rossi bustled through the low doorway.
”Great news, sir!” Rossi said as he motioned for a n.o.bbler of rum. ”We are finally making progress. And I have very special news for you, something very pleasing, I'm sure!”
At this, Harris made a discreet departure.
Intrigued though the patterer was at the prospect of Rossi's news, he insisted on first relaying his own startling intelligence from the hospital visit, about the unsuspected death by firearm and the emergence of yet a third victim, the poisoned army veteran.
In truth, these were the only positive new factors he could grasp and juggle. Of course, he had suspicions, riddles and puzzles. Something about the Gleaner Gleaner publisher Dr. Laurence Halloran's avowed Christian charity toward the dead rival publisher did not ring quite true. Even Captain Rossi's clear ignorance of his old regiment seemed rather odd. And what, nagged a voice at the back of his mind, had Dr. Cunningham meant by his hint to avoid close contact with anyone at the hospital? Did he in fact mean a medical colleague, Dr. Thomas Owens, perhaps? publisher Dr. Laurence Halloran's avowed Christian charity toward the dead rival publisher did not ring quite true. Even Captain Rossi's clear ignorance of his old regiment seemed rather odd. And what, nagged a voice at the back of his mind, had Dr. Cunningham meant by his hint to avoid close contact with anyone at the hospital? Did he in fact mean a medical colleague, Dr. Thomas Owens, perhaps?
But Dunne was also conscious of the overriding dictum of the Runners, pa.s.sed down from their founder, Henry Fielding: Never take anything at face value; suspicions, hunches and doubts are useless without proof. Sound advice, mused the patterer. So he would take all the evidence with a grain of salt-even the mysterious grains of sugar.
He turned to Rossi. ”So, what's your news?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
Each lordly man his taper waist displays, Combs his sweet locks and laces on his stays, Ties on his starch'd cravat with nicest care, And then steps forth to petrify the fair.
-Bernard Blackmantle (C. M. Westmacott), The English Spy (1825)
”I HAD INTERESTING CONVERSATIONS WITH DR. HALLORAN AND Miss Dormin earlier,” Captain Rossi began. ”The publisher tells me that the man Abbot was originally an American printer who had supported the loyal-to the Crown, that is-forces in the war of 1812, before having to leave his home and business for Canada. He ultimately enlisted in, or was pressed into, the 57th.” HAD INTERESTING CONVERSATIONS WITH DR. HALLORAN AND Miss Dormin earlier,” Captain Rossi began. ”The publisher tells me that the man Abbot was originally an American printer who had supported the loyal-to the Crown, that is-forces in the war of 1812, before having to leave his home and business for Canada. He ultimately enlisted in, or was pressed into, the 57th.”
The patterer raised his eyebrows but was not surprised.
”But, my boy,” Rossi continued, ”the very important intelligence is that we can now more accurately estimate the time of the murder. The doctors, I gather, could not be sure of that because the fire distorted the usual signs, such as rigor mortis. We do have a witness, however, to shed new light on the case: Miss Dormin! That's why she came to the scene with Dr. Halloran, to tell us. But she became upset, and left abruptly. When she had recovered, she was able to tell me that she saw the printer, alive and well, on the morning of the fire. She was a visitor to the shop, by arrangement, to collect a ma.n.u.script-I believe they call it 'copy.'”
”What else did she say?” asked Dunne, trying not to appear eager for any crumb about the young lady.
”I suggest you ask her yourself,” replied Rossi, with a smile. ”She will attend morning service tomorrow at St. James's. Bonne chance! Bonne chance!”
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NICODEMUS DUNNE LEFT the taproom determined not to rely simply on luck. He headed diagonally across George Street to the huge emporium on the corner of Market Street known as the Waterloo Stores.