The Ghost of Waterloo

by Robin Adair

  But the prize outside the Angel today was clearly won by Captain Rossi. It was he who drove off with Miss Hathaway.

  The Pieman and the Patterer started walking.

  Nicodemus Dunne sat comfortably on a chaise longue in the office of the Bank of New South Wales, which was on George Street, just south of the military barracks. He was facing Mr Joseph Hyde Potts, the manager of the bank, who had been the first and only employee when the institution had opened its doors and its coffers eleven years earlier. The seat was comfortable because Mr Potts was so attached to his job that he lived on the premises, always on guard. He even slept on this wicker couch.

  Potts was a regular recipient of the Patterer’s news recitations, a particularly well-paying one because the Colonial Treasury subsidised the fee, a fact that had intrigued Dunne until he learnt that he was being paid to stay away from Britain and a royal scandal that was too painful to consider.

  ‘Dear me, Mr Dunne,’ Mr Potts tut-tutted as they shared a pot of tea. The Patterer did not know whether the manager was put out by the details of his competitor’s calamity, or by an ugly scene in his own front chamber only moments before. A drunken gentleman had staggered into the room and demanded a glass of porter with a rum chaser (in any order) and a penny pipe of best Brazil twist.

  Dunne suspected such misunderstandings occurred quite frequently – as the bank shared the building with the Thistle Inn, drinkers often mistakenly gave their orders to a teller, and barmaid Alice Finn (only a door away) had to deal with some misdirected deposits and requests for withdrawals.

  For whatever reason, Mr Potts shook his head as the younger man read to him details of the grand theft, adding any additional facts he had gleaned.

  ‘So, 14000 pounds missing, they say?’ the banker mused. ‘Why, that would be more than a pound for every man, woman and child in the town.

  ‘But, pray, run through the lost treasure again: the list that results from your admirable research.’ As his visitor obliged, Mr Potts made careful notes in pencil on a large sheet of paper. He made no immediate comments but only grunted occasionally, as the Patterer rattled off what he now knew.

  Missing, it seemed, were 800 half-crowns, worth 100 pounds; 8000 shillings: 400 pounds; 1000 dollar coins: 312 pounds and ten shillings; and 1200 sixpences: thirty pounds. This was the only coinage: a total of 842 pounds and ten shillings.

  To that list, Dunne added 100 fifty-pound notes, that is 5000 pounds; 200 twenties, at 4000 pounds; 400 tenners: 4000 pounds; 400 fivers: 2000 pounds; 500 two-pound notes: 1000 pounds; and 1000 single-pound notes. Silver plate and 2000 sovereigns were untouched.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Mr Potts reflectively after a moment. He stared hard at Nicodemus Dunne.

  ‘What?’ was all the Patterer could think of to say.

  ‘What, indeed,’ replied Mr Potts. ‘Simply, that figures never lie – except perhaps this time.

  ‘Consider the publicly announced total of 14000 pounds. Now, the notes listed in your report alone add up to 17000 pounds. And in coin there would appear to be 842 pounds and ten shillings missing; more of that latter amount in a moment.

  ‘But, immediately, we appear to have a total of 17 842 pounds and ten shillings to be divided at first glance among six miscreants.

  ‘Yet you tell me again that each thief’s share, of notes only, is claimed to be 1133 pounds – a grand total of 6798 pounds. Where then is the extra, let’s see, 10 202 pounds?’

  Mr Potts was in full flight. ‘And now refresh my memory once more: read me again the sentence in the Gazette report about gold coins and silver plate.’

  Dunne obliged. ‘ “Sovereigns to the amount of 2000 pounds, together with a large silver-plate chest, stood contiguous to the place whence the other property was abstracted, but were left untouched by the robbers, who, doubtless, were cunning enough to anticipate the difficulty which would arise in disposing of this description of property.” Is that the part you wanted?’

  The banker nodded. ‘Indeed it is. So, what difficulty could there be in melting down plate, even if you can’t, or for some reason won’t, sell it? And what’s hard in passing, discreetly, perfectly legal coin of the realm?’

  The Patterer had no satisfactory answer. All he could venture was that perhaps the thieves had, in the half-light of the vault, mistaken the gold coins for coppers.

  Mr Potts shrugged at that idea. ‘Perhaps. But although much, much less valuable than the gold and plate, I am also intrigued by those 1000 Spanish dollar coins.’

  ‘But that’s only 310 or so pounds,’ Dunne protested. ‘Is it because of their foreignness? I mean, I know they’re the legendary pirates’ hoard – pieces of eight – but what’s so unusual about the bank having Spanish dollars? They’re valued anywhere in the world, aren’t they? And from the earliest days here we’ve had all sorts of coins floating around.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the banker replied. ‘Trade brings in all sorts – and they leave as payments for importations, since we do not yet have manufacturing to sustain all our needs. There recently have been, for instance, Portuguese johannas, gold napoleons, double-napoleons (and I believe there are even supposed to be rare mis-struck double-napoleons, with his head on both obverse and reverse), Dutch guilders, Indian gold mohurs and their rupees. In earlier days there even surfaced the odd gold angel, or angel-noble to give it the full name, that wonderful English gold coin, hundreds of years old, that bore the Archangel Michael slaying a dragon.’

  ‘Anyway,’ persisted the Patterer, ‘we’re still talking about only 310 odd pounds.’

  ‘ “Odd” is the key word,’ Mr Potts chided gently. ‘The precise value given is 312 pounds and ten shillings. And that’s what interests me.

  ‘At a value of five shillings each, these Spanish dollars could have been counted as being worth 250 pounds. Why the extra sixty-two pounds and ten shillings?

  ‘There is a hole in the figures,’ Dunne conceded.

  ‘Exactly! Because there is a hole in these dollars. They’re obviously holey dollars – the ones the Governor used from 1813 to ease a shortage in currency.’

  Of course. Governor Macquarie had the Spanish coins’ centres punched out, and each five-shilling ring provided a new small coin called a ‘dump’ and valued at one shilling and threepence, or fifteen pence. So the stolen coins must have been holey dollars, stored with their bonus dumps.

  The Patterer’s mind raced. ‘But surely —’ he began.

  ‘Just so,’ Mr Potts clapped his hands. ‘Those dollars and dumps are virtually worthless. They are being withdrawn from circulation and someone redeeming them in small batches would have a thankless task; exchanging them in bulk would surely attract attention – and arrest.

  ‘Why steal them now, and why take them at all and leave 2000 easily negotiable sovs and all that very easily disposed-of silver plate?’

  Good questions. Dunne wondered why the writer of that Gazette story had couched it in such odd terms. Perhaps the scribbler knew something that he had not thought, or cared, to reveal fully. There was only one way to find out: that gentleman of the press could expect a visit.

  First, however, he must not forget the French connection; he needed to consult some literature, then some people, to gain more background on the Emperor, who, impossibly, may have escaped both his exile and his extinction.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Where more is meant than meets the ear.

  – John Milton, Il Penseroso (1645)

  Nicodemus Dunne’s desire for a conversation with the enigmatic Gazette journalist had to wait. Six pressing matters would delay him – seven, if one counted congress with his landlady as important (and he did).

  The first impediment arose when he was forced to return to his room at the Bag o’ Nails for an overlooked item. He had neglected to return to Mr McGarvie, at his stationery warehouse and bookshop, a borrowed volume. This was a translation of an immensely popular memoir of Bonaparte’s stay on St Helena, written by a naval officer who ha
d attended the General there. The author, who had been considerably enriched by the book, was the Comte de Las Cases.

  His revelations were limited by the fact that he had left before his master’s last illness. But the great interest now for the Patterer was the Frenchman’s detailed and intimate insights into the apparent character and attitudes of Bonaparte’s foe there, his gaoler, General Sir Hudson Lowe.

  After retrieving the book, he was waylaid in the taproom of the inn by his landlady, Mrs Norah Robinson. Her red-gold long hair blazed even in the bar’s poor light, and her green eyes were always alive, in either anger or good humour. She was a handsome Irishwoman who ran the hostelry during the frequent absences of her husband on business – funny business in skirts, she chose to make clear. She had an iron hand for hard men or hooligans and a velvet glove for favourites. Dunne was decidedly one of the latter.

  ‘I’d like you to meet some new guests,’ she said, motioning towards a table in a corner. The man sitting there looked vaguely familiar, but the Patterer identified the dog at his side instantly. It was Munito, the performing dog from the theatre.

  ‘Nicodemus Dunne,’ said Mrs Robinson, ‘this is Mr Dominic Keynes’ – she gave the surname two syllables – ‘and of course you recognise his partner.’ The men shook hands and the large dog, one of long ginger hair and uncertain parentage, gave a nod of acknowledgement.

  ‘Mr Keynes and Munito will be staying here for a spell,’ explained Norah Robinson. ‘I have put them in a chamber near yours.’ A chamber for a canine? Oh, well, he was a star.

  The Patterer inclined his head to his new neighbours. ‘Delighted to make your acquaintance.’

  Mr Keynes said that he was equally delighted and Munito raised a big paw in salute.

  Dunne studied the newcomer closely and turned the man’s names over in his mind. ‘Pax vobiscum,’ he said suddenly.

  Mr Keynes started, then relaxed and smiled. ‘Very clever, Mr Dunne, “peace be unto you” also. Although, strictly speaking, it is the form of words used by a bishop. But how did you know?’

  Mrs Robinson was puzzled. ‘Know what?’

  ‘That I was,’ explained her new guest, ‘once in holy orders. Again, what gave me away?’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Patterer, ‘I observe that you are still more comfortable with a tonsure and you still prefer to wear sandals. More important, however, is the fact that your name is a clever clerical pun. Your connection with a dog is a clue, too. You were a Black Friar?’ The man nodded.

  ‘You see,’ Dunne turned to the landlady, ‘such friars are members of the religious order called Dominicans.’ She nodded and he went on. ‘A fervently observant order, they have also been called the “hounds of the Lord” – in Latin Domini canes. Not far removed from Dominic Keynes?’

  Mr Keynes laughed delightedly. ‘Bravo!’ Then he was serious. ‘I am a fallen friar, Mr Dunne. Nothing evil – I simply lost my vocation and much of my love of man. Munito and I are happy touring fairs and theatres. In truth, my credo is “the more I see of men, the more I love dogs”.’

  ‘Surely St Dominic never said such a thing!’ cried Mrs Robinson, shocked to her Celtic core.

  ‘No, dear lady,’ soothed the former friar gently, ‘but another leader of men, one less benevolent: Frederick the Great said it.’

  The Patterer privately wondered if the Dominicans, who had fiercely prosecuted the Inquisition of the Holy Office, were any more loving of man than the Prussian warlord.

  As Dunne left his new-found friends, Norah Robinson followed him to the street door.

  ‘Will you be in this evening?’ she asked.

  He knew her meaning. There was no love, but they had both been lonely people. Ah, thought Dunne guiltily, here I have Norah, also in the biblical sense, and now I’m mooning (in truth, lusting, he conceded) after Miss Susannah Hathaway. He sighed. That Mr John Gay had the right of it when he versified:

  How happy could I be with either,

  were t’other dear charmer away!

  That was in The Beggar’s Opera; he would be a foolish beggar indeed if he did not take all things as they came. ‘I will be in tonight,’ he said warmly, ‘if you will, of course, permit me?’

  The lady of the house nodded and smiled as they brushed past each other.

  Even the return of the borrowed volume was to be delayed; the second distraction of the day was bumping into Dr Thomas Owens in the street. ‘Well met,’ said the surgeon. ‘I will kill two birds with, if you’ll pardon a medical jest, one gallstone.’ He bared his yellowed, horse-like teeth in a distorted smile.

  ‘It will save me a trip to the Police Office,’ he continued. ‘You can pass on to Captain Rossi the results of my expedition into the dark interior, and elsewhere, of the cancelled castrato, Signor Bello. I can tell you exactly how he died and, as I told you at the scene in the Angel Inn, the time he died. But how it happened – in a locked room – is beyond me.

  ‘Nonetheless, accept that he was stabbed, once, which proved to be sufficient. Vital organs and arteries were crucially compromised and he bled internally, massively.

  ‘He did not die instantly, in a sense that he literally dropped dead. He may have staggered and fallen backward. He did not have any wounds on his hands to suggest he may have tried to defend himself. Perhaps he knew his killer.

  ‘Now, the shape of the wound’s entry to the belly is rather interesting. A wound such as that, through the skin and subcutaneous matter – flesh and so on – tends to retain the shape of the weapon involved. At the extreme end of this scale, a hack by a Heavy Brigade cavalryman’s broadsword makes a different wound from that of, say, a light dragoon’s sabre or a lancer’s pig-sticking spearhead.

  ‘I have seen a Heavy’s sword remove limbs, smash ribcages, even completely sever heads. Sabres make slashes. Now, our man has a smallish puncture near the umbilicus.’

  The Patterer shivered. ‘So, as he wasn’t slashed or shot, he wasn’t killed by a soldier.’

  Owens shook his head. ‘I can’t say that. You see, I have witnessed similar wounds, countless times, on the battlefield. I deduce he was almost certainly killed by a soldier’s stabbing weapon – a bayonet.’

  ‘Why not a butcher’s knife?’ challenged Dunne.

  ‘Because the wound does not match such a blade. That wide blade – and forget a cleaver – would leave behind an open wound in the skin like inch-long “lips”. An officer’s sword would do much the same damage. Also, this was no sailor’s or watchman’s cutlass.

  ‘Back to bayonets: the sword bayonet on a Baker rifle carried by British skirmishers would leave the wider, longish “lipped” wound we’ve just discussed. But consider the socket bayonet on the Brown Bess musket issued to most infantrymen. It has a triangular blade, starting at a needle point and ending at the socket on the muzzle mouth. It is about half an inch at that finishing stage – our shape exactly. For that matter, the French carbine found at Cockle Bay would also have such a bayonet.’

  The Patterer frowned. ‘But a musket measures four feet and ten inches long and its bayonet is another seventeen inches. Put together, they make three inches over six feet – few soldiers themselves tip that! It would surely be hard to conceal all that in a public place.’

  ‘Perhaps the killer carried only the bayonet,’ said Owens. ‘But, anyway, why conceal such weaponry? This is a garrison town; we all live in an armed camp. We hear diane – pardon, reveille – and the retreat beaten, bugles for “lights out” and mess, drums and fifes for musters, parades and punishments, exercises. When is seeing an armed soldier out of the ordinary?’

  ‘And there was a redcoat in the vicinity,’ cried Dunne excitedly, recalling the evidence at the scene of the death.

  The doctor patted him on the shoulder. ‘Find that soldier; but this still leaves that damned locked room to be explained. For that, you must talk to the living. I talk to the dead. And they talk to me.’ He shook his head sadly as he walked off.

  Chapter Twenty-three
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br />   …from the gray ruins of memory a thousand

  tumultuous recollections are startled…

  – Edgar Allan Poe, Berenice (1835)

  When the Patterer, still clutching the book, strode into the Hope and Anchor – where he knew he was likely to find Captain Rossi, or at least have word of his whereabouts – yet another distraction, though a welcome one, awaited him.

  Rossi was absent but some other friends and acquaintances were there – and so too was a stranger, who recognised Dunne and introduced himself as one who had served on St Helena when Napoleon Bonaparte was there.

  It was no accident that this man, who called himself Josiah Bagley, was now prepared to regale the Patterer (and those of his circle within earshot) with a most interesting tale. For he was responding to a move that Dunne had initially regarded as a gamble; now, like a wager on a burst of athleticism from the Flying Pieman, it was one that paid off.

  In a role reversal, the news-hawker had become a customer, placing the same advertisement in The Gazette and its rivals, The Australian, The Monitor and The Gleaner. At the going rate of two shillings and sixpence for the first eight lines (plus a penny for each extra line), one insertion of his twelve lines cost two shillings and ten pence. The four appearances added up to eleven shillings and four pence. He had also announced his advertisement at each of his public readings of the newspapers. An expensive exercise, he mused; for ten shillings he could have hired a horse for the day and done his rounds in comfort.

  His advertisement had read: