The Ghost of Waterloo (8 page)

When Captain Rossi received the news of the dead body at the water’s edge, he sent the Patterer to see the mystery man in the death-house of the Rum Hospital.

This, thought Dunne bleakly, as he mounted the steps into the huge ward beside the Hyde Park convict barracks, was becoming a habit. A bad one. He was realistic enough to see the use and need for a morgue, but …did he really need to be a witness to the ruins of violence, even murder? Yet that is exactly what had happened recently with disturbing frequency.

For his new descent into the maelstrom of mangled flesh, the Patterer wore his usual daytime attire: a working man’s simple wardrobe of coarse shirt, breeches and jacket, with no hose and the rough shoes made by convict cobblers. He carried a three-shilling cabbage-tree hat woven by a bored and impecunious soldier. All this was calculated to sow the seed among his mostly humble audiences that he had no airs, was no ‘Buck’ Brummell. To lighten his mood, however, he had followed the example of cricket players and added a gay band of ribbon, in this case bright lavender, to his hat.

He was ready to face whatever horrors awaited.

Chapter Eleven

The outward appearance of the hospital was pleasing. The building the Patterer approached was the northernmost of three similar structures that concealed their grim atmosphere of pain and suffering, too often unrelieved, behind graceful colonnaded verandahs. The builders had decided, perfectly correctly, that the style already proved in the heat of earlier colonies would serve best. But the services inside failed.

As well as being popularly labelled the ‘Rum Hospital’ because it had been built in return for a monopoly on importing rum into the colony, this medical last resort had other, less attractive names – many townspeople called it the ‘Sydney Slaughterhouse’ and wags referred to the neighbouring St James’ church and the hospital as ‘Heaven and Hell’. The Patterer took a reassuring look at the church and at the ever-growing charm of nearby Hyde Park and plunged into ‘Hell’.

He walked through the doorway and into a darkened corridor, where he met a familiar figure, Dr Thomas Owens. Dunne forced a smile. Owens was a friend and it saddened the Patterer to know that the doctor was ill and dying. However, he kept working, and a colleague, Dr Peter Cunningham, and the Patterer were the only people in the colony to know his secret. He had an arresting personality.

‘Hello, I’m the doctor. Have a lozenge.’

An unforced grin met this greeting. It was the phrase Owens put to everyone, but the Patterer accepted a small peppermint comfit in the knowledge that the doctor chewed aromatic jujubes to cover his bad breath and dry mouth, only a small but distressing side effect of his mercury treatment for what he believed to be his affliction – the Great Pox, syphilis. It was also the reason he wore gloves at all times.

The corridor was as striking as its custodian. The walls in this wing were lined with glass cases and open display stands, all of which exhibited artfully preserved examples of exotic local flora and fauna.

The Patterer recognised most. There was an amusing platypus, that puzzling mammal, suitably named
Ornithorhynchus paradoxus
, so much a patchwork of other creatures that doubters would look for taxidermists’ stitches. A burly wombat stared stolidly back at him, and he knew that the pretty, red-headed stuffed parrot was a Rose-Hiller, named after the bush area of Western Sydney where it was first seen.

He paused at one exhibit that tested his knowledge. It resembled a large dog with striped haunches.

‘That,’ said Owens, ‘is
Thylacinus cynocephalus
, or Van Diemen’s Wolf – he’s a killer of domestic animals and must go.’ He moved along a pace. ‘But you need no introduction to our latest acquisition.’ He nodded towards a large kangaroo with a grey, blue-tinged pelt. ‘The family Macropodidae, “great-footed”, indeed. This is, of course, a doe – a “Blue Flier”. Her buck is bigger and more red-bodied.’

Dunne leant and patted the large furred sac on the animal’s belly. ‘Are they truly born in the pouch?’

The doctor shook his head. ‘No, but the pups, which for some reason are called joeys, suckle on a teat therein.’

The Patterer glanced at his enthusiastic friend. He looked healthy. Certainly, at forty or so, tall and erect, he had a good colour and a fine mane of curly hair. Perhaps the only obvious oddity was the yellowing of his protuberant, almost horse-like teeth, possibly a result of the mercury’s ravages and the inroads of the disease on his gums and cheeks. How does he keep so calm, hold his nerve in the face of his calamity? Dunne wondered.

They were now at the closed door of the dissecting room. The doctor knocked, opened and peered around the door, and withdrew. With a ‘Sorry!’ to someone inside, he steered his companion into an alcove, frowned and explained. ‘We are delayed by a colleague with unfinished business. It shouldn’t take long. His man is cleaning up. Messy, heavy work.’

The Patterer shook his head. ‘Just how much of this “business” goes on, exactly?’ he inquired.

Thomas Owens considered. ‘In a year? Well, we have to anatomise victims of violence, such as your chap, or any other suspicious case. They vary in number – perhaps dozens, one a week? Then there are the criminals who are hanged. We are allowed to take them. There may be thirty to fifty annually in this unfortunate category.

‘That may seem a lot. But, sadly, it will not be enough to satisfy the demands of teachers and students when, some time in the nottoo-distant future, a medical school sets up here. You know that at home such demands have led to body-snatching. The “Resurrection Men”, as they call them, steal corpses naked from graves – if caught, they are guilty only of misdemeanour, whereas it is a felony to take the clothes, even a shroud!’ He paused. ‘No, there is even worse in this foul trade.’

Dunne nodded. ‘Yes, I have read only recently intelligence about two men in Edinburgh, William Burke and William Hare, who murdered fifteen people to sell to a Dr Robert Knox. They smothered them because the doctor required unmarked bodies.

‘People are strangely stoic about it; they even seem to see a humorous side. I have a verse I read to people and it is always well received. It is by Thomas Hood:

The doctor laughed delightedly. ‘I know another by your Mr Hood – and there is a personal connection. I worked in London at Guy’s Hospital with a famous anatomist named Vyse. I recall the doggerel at his expense:

Thomas Owens suddenly lost patience with their word games. ‘Enough! To work!’ He strode to the death-house door and pushed his way in, followed by the Patterer.

The assistant, who was still hovering near a table, whirled and picked up a bucket from the floor.

‘You’ve had time enough and more,’ said the doctor. ‘Out!’ The man, a sturdy, dark-visaged figure, said nothing but moved to the door. The pail rang tinnily as it struck the doorjamb.

As he passed, the man spoke softly to Dunne, but his words made little sense. ‘Do you like violets?’ he asked.

The Patterer shrugged. ‘Why, yes – yes, I do.’

The assistant kept walking towards the street.

Shaking his head at the strange exchange, Dunne studied the room. Much was familiar. The cabinets still intimidated him, with their menacing saws, knives, drills and some quite mysterious instruments – none softened in appearance by even their decoration of ivory, silver, shagreen or nacre.

And he certainly could not suppress a frisson of fear at the sight of the room’s central features, the dissection tables, one of which now supported a covered shape – which no doubt had not long before been a live human being.

The oppressive drama about to be played out soon pushed into a far corner of Dunne’s mind the two thoughts that had been sparked by his encounter with the cleaner: that the fellow had an odd interest in a stranger’s view of flowers, and that he had ended his ‘messy, heavy work’ with what an echoing clang had clearly indicated was an empty pail.

Chapter Twelve

Dr Thomas Owens peeled away the sheet, revealing a naked corpse. The Patterer winced. The shocking wound ensured that there was no need to question the method of killing. The mechanics of that method, however, were a vastly different matter: was it self-inflicted, or wrought by another hand? Perhaps it had been accidental?

‘First,’ said the doctor, ‘the nature and the size of the wound clearly indicate that a long-arm weapon, not a pistol, was fired at the closest range.

‘Now, let us continue with a few remarks about the weapon, which fortuitously was discovered beside the body. Indeed, it
was
a service musket, weighing about eleven pounds and measuring about three feet and six inches from muzzle to trigger.

‘So, an accident? Well, they
do
happen. Let’s say, then, that our subject dropped the piece, charged and at full cock, and it fired. But the angle of impact would not feasibly be perpendicular to the chest in that case. Which it clearly was.

‘Suicide, then? I think not. The musket’s weight would require extreme strength to hold it out, level, and then one hand would have to be reasonably free to press the trigger – which he would really have to
push
, not pull. The effort of pushing would set him even more off balance. And, again, in this scenario the barrel’s length poses problems.’

‘Could he have used a foot?’ the Patterer asked.

‘Well, it is true that he was found wearing no boots, but he could not have used a big toe and still have fired parallel to the ground. The gun would have to have been on an angle.’ He shook his head. ‘No, Dunne, the misadventure here was murder.’

The Patterer shivered and swallowed nervously. But he had no time for qualms. He had to move on. ‘How long has he been dead?’ he asked.

Dr Owens shrugged. ‘Ah, well, as to that, it is always hard to say with any degree of accuracy. Therefore, let us begin with one of the basic indicators. This is the lividity.’ He pointed to the dark stains suffusing the skin on the under parts of the body. ‘This occurs when the blood is no longer circulating; it settles at the lowest points. The appearance here suggests – only suggests, mind you – that the process began perhaps not much more than six or seven hours ago.

‘By the by, the disposition of lividity in this case clearly points to the body having been on its back most of the time from expiration until the present.

‘Now,’ continued Owens, firmly rapping the cadaver with his knuckles. ‘Let us consider rigor mortis. This offers more clues. From a few hours, perhaps three, after death, the muscles stiffen, then gradually relax again after up to three, perhaps four days. Rigor reaches a maximum at about the twelve-hour stage. Our friend here is as stiff as a guardsman on parade.’

The doctor paused. ‘Let us also look at decomposition, which accelerates within forty-eight hours of death – earlier in the hotter climes of a colony such as ours.

‘This is where the maggot – spawned by that constant irritant
Lucilia cuprina
– you may know it better as the blowfly – comes into its own as a scientific adviser. When someone, or something, is dead, after four or so hours flies will begin laying eggs in the body. In the case of our man, there has been no significant infestation. Ergo, using what we know, which includes the clear fact that he was discovered and brought here at about seven o’clock this morning, I could say that, at that time, he had been deceased for about four hours.’

‘So he was killed about three or four a.m., in the dark?’ pressed the Patterer.

‘So it would seem,’ replied Owens. ‘Of course, putrefaction would completely clear the air.’ He smiled at his accidental pun.

Dunne frowned. ‘I thought it was only one indicator?’

‘Be that as it may,’ said the doctor, then added with a mischievous glance, ‘but when, exactly, is “dead” dead? There is great dissent in the medical profession about when the fact, or act, of death actually takes place. There always has been doubt.

‘The ancient Thracians, as Herodotus tells us, kept a body for three days to make sure it did not revive. The Romans extended this test period to eight days. Then they cremated bodies before burying the ashes. After that there was no argument.’

Thomas Owens warmed to his chilly subject. ‘Of course, there have been seemingly miraculous resurrections, either as a result of misleading natural phenomena or, sometimes, medical mistakes.