by Robin Adair
‘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.
‘In the first category lies the return to “life” of Lord Nelson, when his body was being brought home from Trafalgar preserved in a barrel of rum – or was it brandy? No matter. Well, one night a marine on guard was paralysed by the sight of the Admiral rising up before him. Now, that was simply a case of gases building up in the body and rendering it more buoyant.
‘On the other hand, the Flemish physician and surgeon Vesalius, the master of all early anatomists, was once performing a post mortem on a grandee in Spain when the subject suddenly sat up – well and truly alive! Only his fame, and a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, saved Vesalius from the fire, for sorcery.’
‘Surely,’ probed the Patterer, ‘there is no real argument these days?’
The doctor shrugged. ‘Much store is still set by the putrefaction test and proving the absence of circulation. Some doctors still insist on cutting off a finger of a corpse to make sure it does not bleed.
‘People will always fear being buried alive. Why, I even understand that gentlemen in Europe have plans to connect bells above ground to the interior of coffins, so help can be called if the occupants aren’t dead and awaken!’
Owens clapped his companion on the shoulder. ‘But we are modern men, are we not? So, never fear, our fellow will ring no bells.’
Businesslike once more, the doctor eyed his silent charge. ‘I see that he is well built, of about thirty years, well nourished. From his colouring and physiognomy I also would declare that he is an Irishman. His hands, skin and musculature don’t suggest an agricultural worker, sailor or clerk. The absence of tiny flint fragments and powder burns on his right cheek and temple rule out his having been a soldier.’
He pointed to the open left hand, noting that the little finger was broken. ‘No tar or oakum under these nails, and no widespread sunburning on the body in general – all of which point away from a career under sail.
‘No sir, doubtless he was a convict and a tradesman, a plasterer or a tiler.’
Dunne’s mouth must have hung open, for the doctor laughed. ‘Curb your amazement, my dear young man,’ he said. ‘I can, and I did, make some of those observations, but I was aided and supported by information from some of the men who chanced upon him being carried here from the beach where he fell, at Cockle Bay.
‘They identified him as a Dublin man who was freed here after serving seven years for stealing tea in his homeland. That was, of course, how Captain Rossi was alerted to his death.’
The Patterer frowned. He felt he was missing something important. Owens, however, allowed no interruption as he continued, ‘Let us now look at the wound and elsewhere.’
Both surgeon and layman turned their attention first to the murderous hole in the chest. Owens then rolled the rigid body over, revealing a ragged gap where an ounce of solid lead had chewed its way out.
‘Well, no surprises here,’ he said as he awkwardly returned the body to its original position. Suddenly he paused. ‘Hello, what’s this?’
He pointed to the clenched, frozen right fist. A minute flash of bright fabric peered out, just visible.
‘Hah!’ cried the doctor, frustrated that his attempt to open the fingers failed. He shrugged. ‘Well, there is only one way to find out.’
The Patterer forced himself to watch as Owens selected a silver hammer and smashed the closed fingers. With another instrument, which resembled delicate smith’s pincers, he prised apart the death grip. Dunne let out a long breath when the grinding and crunching of bone finally ceased.
The doctor gently retrieved from the ruin what appeared to be a small leather bag with its opening secured by a fragment of vivid ribbon. Something metallic, small and golden, decorated the bag.
Thomas Owens shook his head and gasped. The Patterer could almost feel the change in his companion’s mood. ‘What’s amiss?’ he asked anxiously.
The doctor was ashen. ‘Amiss? Oh, Dunne, the world has just turned upside down. I had never thought to see this again!’
‘What? What is it?’
Owens dropped the strange discovery into a silver kidney dish and turned. His eyes were wild and haunted. ‘It is death,’ he whispered, ‘an instrument of death and one that has attended the deaths of millions of innocents.’
‘Should I send for Rossi?’ asked the Patterer, mightily alarmed.
The doctor nodded grimly. ‘Do that – and as we cannot summon the King, Rossi must fetch the Governor.’
‘But,’ said Dunne, ordering his thoughts, ‘Whose …thing…is this?’
Thomas Owens’ voice shook. ‘The devil’s – it belongs to the devil!’
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Chapter Thirteen
You must hate a Frenchman as you hate the devil.
– Horatio, Lord Nelson, in Robert Southey’s Life of Nelson (1813)
Within the hour it fell on the shoulders of Captain Rossi to interrupt the luncheon of the Governor, General Darling, with the startling intelligence that a quite respectable, normally sensible citizen – an educated, calm and collected doctor to boot – believed he had evidence that a monster, an enemy thought to be safely dead and buried, was alive, and here in Sydney town.
Summoned to the hospital, the Police Chief had heard Thomas Owens out, bundled the doctor and the Patterer into the wicker body of his light and fast carriage outside, then whipped the fine, matched pair of horses into action.
The trio was silent as the vehicle lurched north along Macquarie Street, turned left into Bent Street and halted at a rear entrance to Government House. The horses had barely raised a sweat, but Rossi was lathered by the growing stress fuelled by his imagination. A careful and curious sentry passed the three men through the manicured grounds and on into the house. Dunne and the doctor hovered in a vestibule while the Captain, after a false start, found Ralph Darling and his lady, Elizabeth, in the dining room.
The Governor’s first reaction was, oddly, visible relief at delaying his midday meal, or at least the one that Elizabeth had ordered. She believed he was not getting enough exercise and was growing fat. Fat? Bah! He was no longer a man in his prime, fighting for Old Nosey in Spain. For God’s sake, he was now fifty-three! But no, today he was to be fed cold ham of kangaroo, with side dishes of purslane – a weed, mind – French breakfast radish in sour cream, and green beans, the stringless ones they called ‘lazy housewife’. And the coffee would not be real, but made of dried radicchio, that dago chicory. Agh! Well may Mrs General Darling frown, but when he patted his pot belly its wise possessor knew it was simply a case of his having a ‘bay window’ or a ‘corporation’, either name the indicator of success and prosperity.
Captain Rossi sketched a bow to the Darlings, took a deep breath and said, ‘Sir, I have urgent news for your ears only – it would be distasteful for your wife to hear it.’
Darling raised an eyebrow, but catching the anxiety in the policeman’s eyes he nodded. ‘Perhaps you will excuse us, my dear?’ Mrs Darling gave a patient smile and swept from the room, shooing with her a steward.
Rossi wetted his lips. ‘I believe you should hear this.’ He went to the door and beckoned in Thomas Owens and the Patterer. The Governor looked hard at Dunne but said nothing. Each man knew too much about the other to be comfortable together.
‘Very well, Doctor,’ said the Captain quietly. ‘Just tell His Excellency whom you believe you’ve discovered.’
Thomas Owens told him. Luncheon would not be taken that day.
‘Good God, man!’ gasped the Governor. ‘Are you insane? Napoleon Bonaparte? Alive? And here?’
The target of the shocked, strangled outburst was pale but unbowed.
‘Yes, General,’ he said stubbornly. ‘Today I found, not a mile perhaps from here, an artefact that thirty years ago became the prized possession of the man who was to be Emperor of France – and the Devil of all Europe … If it is here … so, too, I believe, is he. Yes, Old Boney is back.’
Ralph Darling attempted to calm, perhaps humour, the distressed Owens. ‘Very well, Doctor,’ he said soothingly, ‘What is it, exactly, this horrible relic of the past that so concerns you?’
‘Sir,’ said Owens, ‘it is a package of poison that a Dr Yvan prescribed – if that word can be applied here – for General Bonaparte as he went to war in Egypt in ’98. It was a destructive draught he desired to have with him in the event of failure or capture, even perhaps to thwart a wound that was too grievous. Some will say that the mixture was given to him before the Russian campaign of 1812. My belief, however, is that Cairo was the true setting.’
The Governor cut in. ‘Why did he not use it, then, either in Egypt or Russia? He failed spectacularly in both areas – in Aboukir Bay he lost his entire fleet and on the winter retreat he lost his army!’
The doctor nodded. ‘It is known that he tried to use the substance in 1814, just after he was beaten and about to go into his first exile, on Elba. And some say that he attempted self-murder again a year later, after Waterloo.’
He took the small coloured bag from a pocket and his audience crowded in to stare and prod at it. ‘I have analysed a sample of the contents and it is a powerful poison, right enough – several, in fact, and they tally with those described all those years ago, in Dr Yvan’s papers.
‘And …’ he added, pointing to the tiny metallic button that decorated the pouch, ‘there is this.’
Captain Rossi caressed it with gentle fingertips and shrugged. ‘It’s handsome for its size, perhaps it is gold – but what is it, a butterfly, or some such?’
Owens smiled. ‘Look again, closely. And consider it very carefully.’
They all examined the challenging curiosity.
‘We yield,’ said the Patterer finally.
‘It’s a bee!’ cried the doctor in triumph. ‘And a very special one. It is an exact representation of the industrious insect the Emperor Napoleon had sewn in gold on the robes for his coronation in 1804.’
‘Oh, that’s as may be,’ said Rossi, but Owens could see that the others were inclined to accept that point, at least.
‘Even so,’ persisted Darling, ‘How can you be sure that “your” package is his, the original? And even if it were, that someone did not take it from him on St Helena – or after his death there?’
Owens nodded again, composed now, as if he were on more comfortable ground, confronting a disease or an injury in a patient. ‘That is a valid point, Excellency. People would be eager to take some small, squalid “souvenirs” away with them – and certainly, while he was alive, the General was generous with personal gifts to visitors.
‘No, I believe that the sachet only left the island with its owner, and I admit to being a very careless, unobservant medical man for not realising that until this very day. For an event that occurred the morning after his official death should have alerted me to the fact that something was terribly wrong.’
Captain Rossi, fearing that his spent emotions may have been wasted on a wild goose chase, was becoming irritable with his friend’s strange story. ‘Now, see here, Owens, how do you know all this for certain? For that matter, how do you know anything about his death, an event the world so far has accepted?’
The doctor smiled thinly. ‘I know,’ he said simply, ‘because I was there. I saw – or thought I saw – Napoleon Bonaparte dead, gutted and buried.’
Only he could break the shocked silence and he did. He told them a strange story, dreamily detached, lapsing into the third person, almost as if he were talking about someone else, not himself. Certainly, he was somewhere else, in another time …
Chapter Fourteen
St Helena – 6 May 1821
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings:
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down
– James Shirley, The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses (1659)
‘To be killed at Waterloo would have been a good death,’ said Napoleon Bonaparte upon his arrival at St Helena in 1815. Now, six years later, the prison island lost in the Atlantic Ocean had become his watery Waterloo.
After a painful decline, the man who swallowed Europe coughed a bloody froth and died at 5.49 on the evening of 5 May.
Seventeen men were crowded into a room at Longwood House, solemnly gathered around the body, which was laid out on a table. This was far from a lying-in-state; the corpse was uncovered and naked. The Emperor was dead, at fifty-one.
Those seventeen men included the doctors and witnesses required for a post mortem. Others were, of course, simply the morbidly curious, prepared to brave the gore and the sickly stink for the sake of a famous memory or even, if they we
re fortunate, a memento mori, perhaps a lock of hair or a nail clipping.
Furious segar-smoking could not disguise the ripening stench of sweaty clothing and body odour, a term that took on new meaning as the growing corruption of the corpse cloyed the air and caught at throats, defying perfume-soaked kerchiefs. And the surroundings were depressing: the sharp claws of rats skittered behind the skirting boards and leprous wallpaper peeled off in damp strips.
The final indignity, dissection, was unavoidable. The late General’s gaolers were keen to dispel charges that they had poisoned their celebrated charge. Napoleon himself had fuelled that rumour mill, telling his last doctor, ‘After my death, I want you to examine my stomach particularly carefully; make a precise, detailed report on it. I charge you to overlook nothing.’ Dr Antommarchi, a fellow Corsican, agreed. And so the stage was set.
For the laymen present, the autopsy lived up to necropsy’s fearful reputation as the ‘beastly science’. The sturdy body’s distended abdomen had been ripped open and the organs brutally exposed. A blood-spattered Antommarchi examined evidence of corrosion and a lesion in the area of the pylorus, the opening between the stomach and the intestine, and hurriedly announced that the cause of death was cancer.
While at least one important man, Napoleon’s chief gaoler, Sir Hudson Lowe, was pleased and in agreement with what the autopsy concluded, one witness was deeply puzzled.
This worrier was Thomas Owens, who understood corpses. He had been an army surgeon during the last Iberian and Continental campaigns, both of which had been sparked by the ambitions of the man whose shell now lay before him.
At the climax of the conflict – between 1810 and ’15 – the British Army numbered more than 300000. After Waterloo, its strength dropped by two-thirds.
With fewer soldiers, few battles and, consequently, fewer wounds or illnesses, the army needed fewer doctors. Owens drifted onto the reserve lists, which paid less. But, money notwithstanding, his removal from the battlefield suited him. Doctoring under fire was generally less successful than the often hit-or-miss practices carried out in even the comparative calm of civilian peacetime. While all patients feared treatment, only soldiers had turned it into a grim prayer muttered before battle: ‘God save me from the surgeons!’
