Part 6 (1/2)
The patterer hesitated. ”What exactly did Captain Rossi tell you about the fire and what we found?”
”He said I was not to tell anyone yet about having been at the scene. I asked why, for goodness' sake, and he said it was for my own protection. I asked what he meant and he said he had to confide in me that there may have been other slayings connected to this one and that the killer may think I know something I should not. He said, however, that I could talk to you. He added that I could trust you implicitly.”
That was when Nicodemus Dunne nodded, took a deep breath and made Miss Dormin his partner in crime. Detection, that is.
The moment he opened his mouth to tell her all, he knew, of course, that he should not have revealed anything about the investigation. The governor would have been furious, but what chance did duty to a past-middle-aged general stand in the face of the wide-eyed interest of a nubile beauty?
An imp in the patterer's brain rationalized his capitulation to Cupid with the indelicate words, coa.r.s.e but true, of love-blinded men throughout the ages: A standing co-. No! In deference to Miss Dormin, he would censor these words! Rather, he would concede that a tumescent male member tumescent male member has no conscience. has no conscience.
Dunne was uneasy thinking even in those terms, but admitted their validity. He consoled himself with the idea that it had been Captain Rossi who had opened the door to the young lady's curiosity. Come to that, he thought almost indignantly, why had the captain encouraged her? Was he, too, smitten-and sniffing like a dog after Rachel Dormin?
So, omitting the most distressing details, the patterer told Miss Dormin how it now seemed that three men, connected by the thread that they were current, or past, members of the 57th Regiment, had been murdered most foully. He admitted he did not know why. Suddenly hoping that he had not gone too far (and unable to think of anything else that could show him in a good light), he begged her to put the matter out of her mind and try to enjoy the rest of their time out together. Miss Dormin agreed.
On one subject the patterer kept his own counsel. He judged that his fair companion held a certain colonist in high esteem. He guessed that she knew of Laurence Halloran's transportation. But, given her recent arrival, she may not have known that two years before he had been jailed for his constant condition-debt-or that a year even further back his schoolmaster son had faced complaints of unseemly behavior. She must know that only this year the governor had appointed Halloran Coroner for Sydney, then dismissed him for threatening a defamatory attack on the colorful Archdeacon Scott.
What she did not know, however, and Dunne was convinced of this, was that Halloran was facing final financial ruin; his business was in trouble that would be terminal if yet another new rival flourished. How would a man described as having a ”disturbed mind” and a ”sense of persecution” react to such a threat? He had been heard to say that he would have to ”kill off the opposition.”
And now someone had done just that. Which was why in his notebook, under that heading ”Persons of Interest,” Nicodemus Dunne carefully wrote the name of the ailing Gleaner Gleaners Laurence Hynes Halloran.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
I do desire we may be better strangers.
-William Shakespeare, As You Like It (1599)
BY THE TIME THE PATTERER HAD POURED OUT TO HIS FAIR COMPANION a digest of the perplexing details, their walk had taken them farther south along Elizabeth Street, away from the church.
This was not the most fas.h.i.+onable pedestrian promenade. That was in the other direction, toward the water and Mrs. Macquarie's Point-an earlier vice-regal lady's favorite resting spot-and the Government Domain. But Dunne had his reasons.
Etiquette dictated that the gentleman must keep the lady on that side of him where she would be least exposed to crowding or receiving thrown-up muck, mud or dust from the gutter and roadway. Though unsaid, it meant that a chamberpot emptied from a window above would, hopefully, miss the lady. Also unsaid, because memories had dimmed, was that walking on the street side had originally had the benefit of leaving free the sword-arms of most men.
Here, there were few pedestrians, no bedrooms above with threatening chamberpots and there was no likelihood of lurking attackers crossing swords with Dunne's walking stick. Still, he kept to convention and walked at Rachel Dormin's right-hand side. Such courtesies had been drummed into him by his foster parents, who insisted that his mother-about whom they protested no other knowledge-expected him always to act like a gentleman.
To their left as they strolled, Dunne's long gait easily adapting to his pet.i.te partner's pace, stretched Hyde Park, up to forty acres saved from grazing and brickmakers clay-quarrying to become a park, a project that was still in progress.
Bound to the north by the Domain, south by the brickfields, east by what had once been First Fleet pioneer ”Little Jack” Palmer's Woolloomooloo Farm, and west by the town proper, the park was dedicated to serving the recreations and amus.e.m.e.nt of the populace. It had once been an exercise field for troops, and even for a decade the first racecourse.
Today the southern end was occupied by two separate groups. Strictly speaking (and the ones speaking most strictly were proponents of the official church line of Sunday observance) there should have been little or no activity. But, in fact, the authorities turned a blind eye between the end of morning prayers and the beginning of evening services.
Thus the first group toward which the patterer steered Miss Dormin was a jolly party of adults and children who had just set up a picnic and amus.e.m.e.nts. There were, for the children, a swing on which to seesaw and running in sacks. For adults, there would be a blindfold wheelbarrow race in which husbands or bachelors would push their squealing partners or sweethearts. A table was loaded with food and drink.
”What on earth are they doing?” asked Miss Dormin, pointing to a line of people waiting to poke their heads in turn through a horse collar.
”Oh,” said the patterer, ”it's to see who can pull the ugliest face-it's called 'grinning.'”
”Some of those men look familiar.”
”That's because you are looking at a wayzgoose.”
”A what?”
”A wayzgoose-a printers' picnic. You recognize some of those gentlemen from The Gleaner The Gleaner or some other journals you've visited.” or some other journals you've visited.”
”What an odd word, wayz ... whatever! What does it mean?”
”Well, originally it was about a master printer entertaining his craftsmen at St. Bartholomew-tide, on or about August 24. In Europe, this marked the beginning of the season of working during the day by candlelight. Here, of course, it could mark the start of the season of relying less on candles.
”Wayz is an Old English word meaning 'stubble.' So a wayzgoose was a bird that fed on a field of mown crop stubble. Goose, if you can obtain it, is still the traditional main dish at a printers' picnic. And Sunday is one of the rare times they can take a few hours off to celebrate. Anyway, strictly speaking they can all say that, after a fas.h.i.+on, they are keeping Sunday observance. The men are all members of a chapel-that's what their craft guild is called. It harks back to early printing's strong links with the church. A printers' leader is even still called the 'father of the chapel.'” is an Old English word meaning 'stubble.' So a wayzgoose was a bird that fed on a field of mown crop stubble. Goose, if you can obtain it, is still the traditional main dish at a printers' picnic. And Sunday is one of the rare times they can take a few hours off to celebrate. Anyway, strictly speaking they can all say that, after a fas.h.i.+on, they are keeping Sunday observance. The men are all members of a chapel-that's what their craft guild is called. It harks back to early printing's strong links with the church. A printers' leader is even still called the 'father of the chapel.'”
Dunne excused himself and approached a compositor he knew. When he returned, he explained, ”I wanted to know if there were any other American printers in town who may have known more about Abbot's life. The answer was that there are none. But I learned that he was an extremely skilled typesetter and press-man. And ...”
He noticed that Rachel Dormin had been humming a doleful air. ”What tune is that?” he asked.
”Oh, it is just a sad song I once heard. Your mention of a celebration aligned to the saint's day brought it to mind. It could be regarded as odd to picnic and play at any time connected with that saint or his day. It should perhaps be sad remembrance.”
”Why so?”
”That was the day in 1572 when Catherine de Medici instigated the St. Bartholomew's Day Ma.s.sacre and thousands of French Huguenots died.”
”And your song is about that?”
”No, not that, but about something else that was evil. It was about a dank debtors' cell in the Fleet Prison in London. Inmates sitting on the straw-covered floor with their legs in irons called it 'Bartholomew Fair,' as a parody, a gallows humor allusion to the famous real fair of that name held every year at Smithfield.”
Dunne remembered the fair, and the grim prison, from his Bow Street days. Then Miss Dormin began to sing, quietly but sweetly: Cutpurses, cheaters, bawdy-house doorkeepers, Room for company at Bartholomew Fair.Punks, aye, and panderers, cas.h.i.+ered commanders, Room for company, ill may they fare.
She ended on a clear, long note. ”They sang that because they were in the vile cell for the crime of debt. They felt that other, real criminals should not be free.”
The patterer shook his head. ”How on earth do you know all that?”
”Oh, I had an aunt who lived in Farringdon Street. I would hear the singing as I pa.s.sed the jail and she explained it all. How she longed to leave that sadness.” She waved a hand in an arc encompa.s.sing the town. ”Perhaps all in Australia should regard St. Bartholomew as their patron saint-especially the prisoners here.”
”Why do you say that?”
Miss Dormin frowned. ”Recall how St. Bartholomew was martyred. He, too, was flayed.”