And another aloof creation was a majestic building, largely out of sight for townspeople, across the sprawling Domain. With crenellated parapets, medieval towers, soaring lancet windows, yet suddenly Tudor arches over carriageways, it had been described as “Gothic picturesque.” Newcomers on arriving ships admired it from the harbor and were sure it must be indeed the grand vice-regal castle. In fact, it was the governor’s stables, far nobler than the real, decaying Government House. One critic had bitterly described it as “a palace for horses while people go unhoused.”
It was so typical of Sydney, pondered the patterer as he turned into the redbrick pile of the church. Not everything was as it appeared. This was particularly true of the sedate St. James. Christian amity and charity were often far removed from its four walls. He recalled the startling services in recent months, after the archdeacon was more than usually outraged by attacks in Mr. Edward Smith Hall’s
Monitor
.
One Sunday evening, Hall arrived to find the way barred to his family’s pew; it had been locked on the church-leader’s instructions. The editor, unperturbed, climbed into the pew and broke the lock. The following week, armed beadles stood guard. Hall and his family sat on the altar steps during the service and refused to budge.
Finally, one evening they found the pew boarded up. “Like the deck of a ship,” in the words of
The Monitor
, which Dunne repeated to amused listeners.
On this Sunday, when the patterer looked around the church there was no sign of Mr. Hall—but when he looked right he saw Miss Rachel Dormin. She was wearing the same cut of dress as she had during their first brief encounter, only this time in more sober blue, suitable for Sunday.
The sweet message of redemption, punctuated by thunderous threats of damnation from the red-faced minister, wafted past the patterer’s consciousness. He had eyes and thoughts only for the face demurely cast low, apparently in prayer and reflection. Then she caught his eye, and he could have sworn that she winked.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.
—Francis Bacon, “Of Suspicion” (1625)
A
S THE SERVICE ENDED, THE PATTERER MADE SURE HE WAS OUT THE door first, so that he could “accidentally” cross his quarry’s path.
“Why, Miss Dormin,” he said, raising his hat. “What a pleasant surprise. Do you remember me? I was with Captain Rossi when you and Dr. Halloran visited the unfortunate
New World
office.”
“Mr. Dunne—of course! Though I barely recognized you. Clothes, indeed, maketh the man.”
“My tailor,” said Dunne, “tells me I would grace Harriette Wilson’s
Paris Lions and London Tigers
.”
Miss Dormin looked perplexed until her escort explained the reference, then said, “Ah, I was not familiar with the allusion—pray, are you a lion or a tiger?”
“I suppose I am a kangaroo now.”
She laughed delightedly.
The patterer made his next move. “May I walk you to your next destination?”
She smiled. “With pleasure, although you may be soon bored. I am at rare liberty this morning and simply plan to stroll gently until pleased to stop.” She took the arm he offered and looked up, serious now. “I talked to Captain Rossi and he spoke most highly of you. He rather more than hinted that you are someone special, an important ally in the search for the printer’s slayer.”
Nicodemus Dunne flushed and stammered a modest reply.
“Poor Mr. Abbot,” the young woman continued. “As I told the captain, I saw him on both the evening before his death—and the next morning. Sadly, beyond the conventional courtesies, we exchanged barely a word. Business is often like that, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” he replied, and he felt a shiver as she tightened her grip on his arm.
“I delivered to him some matter to be set into type, on the understanding I could pick it up the following morning, to be passed on to the next journal on a list.” Such a round-robin procedure was common, and saved an advertiser from having to write out the material more than once.
“Very economical, I’m sure,” said the patterer. He knew full well that the most sensible system would be for one printer to set the matter and, if their press times did not coincide, share the laboriously set type with rivals. Sometimes this happened, but spirited, often bitter competition usually ruled out cooperation. “Tell me,” he added. “You saw nothing suspicious that morning?”
“Not a thing. But the death and then the fire must have happened soon afterward. Goodness, do you think the killer was there, hiding nearby, when I called?”
“I can’t dismiss the possibility, in all honesty,” said Dunne quietly. “Let us hope not. But, away from that, do you recall the content of the copy you were transporting?”
“Indeed. It was a government order. Dr. Halloran had had it set for
The Gleaner
and I knew it was Mr. Abbot’s turn, before Mr. Wentworth’s
Australian
.”
“Would you recognize that text now?” asked Dunne. He took out of his pocket the galley proof he had pulled in the
New World
office and showed it to her.
She studied the text and said, “It’s very tiny type, isn’t it? Dr. Halloran once showed me the case with it in. It’s called Agate or something, no?”
“I really meant, are the words familiar?”
Miss Dormin nodded. “Oh, yes. I know I probably shouldn’t, but I can’t resist sneaking a look at the copy that comes my way. This seems to be the beginning of the government order. However …” She broke off and frowned. “I don’t understand the ending, such as it is.”
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, coarse 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
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′
s Laurence Hynes Halloran.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I do desire we may be better strangers.
—William Shakespeare,
As You Like It
(1599)
B
Y 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 fashionable 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 petite 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 amusement 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 amusements. 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
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 fashion, 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.’”