by Robin Adair
‘Obadiah Dawks was a journalist who drank too much and played one silly game too many. It was with me and it drew him to his death. For he knew the answer to the mystery of why a chest of silver plate and 2000 sovereigns played no part in the thieves’ haul. Oddly, the reason wasn’t worth dying for, as I will in due course explain. Only when he subsequently learnt of something else that had been stolen, but was unreported, did he sign his own death warrant.
‘Poor Josiah Bagley, poisoned at the marketplace, was always on the verge of remembering something vital he had overheard ten years earlier. He never did remember it, but it was his murder that spurred me to decipher his clue.
‘Now,’ said the Patterer, marshalling his thoughts. ‘How were they killed? Creighton, of course, was simply shot. Bello posed a more difficult case: stabbed, and not by his own hand, in a locked room. Later, a dog that had been in the brickfields soiled my clothes with red ochre on his paws. Something similar had happened to me at the death scene, where I brushed against the door of Bello’s chamber.
‘So too had the murderer, putting onto the door ochre clay stains that he had picked up from a new delivery of bricks in the alley outside. If I could see my marks, why couldn’t he notice his? Simply because his coat was already bright red! A soldier had been seen near the murder room. This was the killer, who had posed as a guard on the brick delivery cart’s convict crew. He wore a uniform stolen from the theatre costumes for The Recruiting Officer. He carried a musket from a cache at John Shan’s market garden. Who would question his presence? Even armed.
‘He approached the singer’s room, tricked the man into coming up close to the door – and stabbed his seventeen-inch bayonet through the keyhole, into the victim’s stomach. Then he simply left the scene, just another of the 1325 redcoats in the settlement.
‘Bagley? He was fed strychnine, again because the killer knew of his links with me. This is true of all the other unfortunates, save Creighton.
‘That means someone was close to me, watching. A spy. A traitor. He’s dead now, but he was a killer, too, of Dawks.
‘The journalist was lured to St Phillip’s church and beaten savagely around the head with the lectern’s metal eagle. To throw us off the scent, poor, dead Dawks was left hanging from the bell rope, an apparent suicide.
‘So that now leaves one killer, one active mastermind.’
Half-a-dozen voices competed. ‘Who?’
Miss Susannah Hathaway had been toying with a pin nervously teased from her hair. As the Patterer replied, you could hear it drop.
‘Why,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘a person who robbed the bank, has plotted a revolution and is a ghost of Napoleon Bonaparte…
‘And he’s here in this room.’
Chapter Forty-nine
This busy, puzzling stirrer-up of doubt,
That frames deep mysteries, then finds ’em out,
– John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, ‘A Satire Against Mankind’ (1679)
Reverend Samuel Marsden … A bully in the pulpit.
After the first outbursts, no one needed to say any more, ‘But he’s dead, isn’t he?’ or, ‘Are you mad, sir?’ They all now listened in silence, entranced, as Nicodemus Dunne wove his spell.
‘Our crimes, robbery, rebellion and murder, all have their roots in an event that occurred ten years ago.
‘Napoleon Bonaparte did not die on St Helena on 5 May 1821. He had escaped three years earlier. His place as a prisoner on the island had been taken by a desperate criminal on the run there. This man faked suicide by leaving his clothing at the edge of a cliff high over the water and taking on the Emperor’s identity, straightaway retiring incommunicado to his bedchamber. There would be no suspicions at first. Bonaparte often did this.
‘Meanwhile, the real prisoner was smuggled onto a ship that was about to leave. He was concealed in a luggage crate with some water and airholes. I know that this is possible.’ He looked across at the Flying Pieman but did not elaborate: his friend had tried to smuggle a lover to Van Diemen’s Land in such a manner and she had been horribly lost in a shipwreck.
He picked up his thread: ‘This method of escape may never have been exposed if an accomplice at the time had not, arrogantly, been unable to resist a chance to taunt the island’s gaoler, Sir Hudson Lowe. On the dock, this person made a deliberate misquotation of a Shakespearean passage, implying that they were making “an honourable retreat with bag and baggage”. That’s exactly how the prisoner was retreating, honourably or not.
‘Josiah Bagley, of course, was a soldier on the dock. He never quite recognised the reversal of words. I just happened to. The ship upon which Bonaparte stowed away on that 18 March 1818 was the Winchelsea —’
Dominic Keynes interrupted: ‘Why wasn’t a hue and cry raised, even after the ship had sailed?’
‘No one dared,’ replied the Patterer. ‘Too many people would have been punished; in the case of Sir Hudson, maybe with a death sentence. This was, after all, the second escape. Elba had been embarrassing enough; if revealed, this would make Britain the laughing stock of the world. The restored royal party in France would not want it known either. So his captors told no one.’
‘Even if this is true,’ protested Major Thomas Mitchell, ‘why would he – how could he – come here?’
Dunne shook his head. ‘After Waterloo, he was a marked man in Europe and other countries he had ravaged and humiliated. There he would have been tried and executed, perhaps out of hand. Britain? Well, he even wrote to the Prince Regent, saying he would “retire” to the countryside. And he failed in an attempt to flee to the Americas.
‘So, distance from danger, maybe merely the sheer accident of a ship’s passage, could have been enough to beach him at Botany Bay.’
‘What would he have wanted?’ asked William King.
‘Oh, perhaps simply a quiet life – until his old ambitions resurfaced and he planned to stir up a resentful populace and again play God.’
Now Dunne could tell them all of the smuggled guns, the ‘convict’ invasion and how the teeth of the plot had been drawn by the sinking of the Three Bees. ‘That is where, originally, the bank robbery came into the picture. For guns, and gunners, you need money. And you need local help, for whom greed and need may easily overcome loyalty.
‘So, first,’ said the Patterer, ‘consider the robbery. As usual, the ancients, this time Cicero, had it to rights – “Cui bono?”: “To whose profit?”
‘To answer, we must examine what was stolen – and what was not stolen. It first occurred to me that perhaps there had been, in the complete sense, no robbery at all.’
He turned to the bank manager, Mr Thomas McVitie. ‘Would it not be in the interests of the bank to disguise its recent less-than-stellar performance under the cover of the apparent theft of assets that did not exist? For example, the tally of banknotes stolen has varied widely, day by day. What was it exactly – 14000 pounds or 17000? More? Less? Much of the coinage was literally small change, although some of the silver may have served an odd purpose. More of that later.
‘The strangest thing was that the thieves, it seems, left the most negotiable booty – 2000 sovereigns, already neatly boxed, and a chest of silver plate.
‘Let’s say it was a straightforward theft. If, as one arrested man deposes, the paper money was meant to pay the front-line thieves and the gold and plate was not wanted, what then was in it for the organiser, the ringleader?
‘You have needed money, Mr McVitie, lots of it. You have had to seek postponement of instalments payable on land you have bought.’ The banker was ashen, but Dunne smiled. ‘Rest easy, sir, others have aroused greater suspicion. For example, there is bold Captain Macarthur. He recently held me hostage’ – Dunne ignored the confused noise – ‘and tormented and threatened violence for my taking too much interest in the robbery.’ He did not add ‘and too much interest in his wife’ but simply continued. ‘This was in the ransacked vault, to which, as a bank director, doubtless he alwa
ys had access. The Reverend Marsden helped him, by the by.
‘Could he have arranged the robbery of his own bank? He is rich, but always greedy for more. And you recall that I have said all the plots intersect? Well, he is certainly a good friend to the French, even when they have come here as spies. In 1825, he feted Hyacinthe de Bougainville, and a year later Jules d’Urville brought olive trees – olive branches? – to him from France. We know now that the French Ministry of the Navy ordered Bougainville to note secretly “the fortifications of targets” here, and that he remarked that the colony, “far away from England, could so easily be snatched away before a rescue could be mounted”.
‘D’Urville had instructions to seek a place suitable for the deportation of criminals – a familiar ring? – and anchorages for large warships. We were at peace, naturally!’
The Patterer gave his audience a moment and drew breath. ‘I think the revolutionary plot just thwarted was laid by someone here during the visit in 1826, with d’Urville, or another officer.
‘So, Mr Macarthur, did you conspire with the French? Rob your own bank? The answer to each question is no. But even if you had, your legal defence would surely be successful – “Furiosus furore solum punitur”…“The madness of the insane is punishment enough”.’
He ignored the crimson-faced ‘Exclusive’ and focused on Mrs Macarthur, with whom he had no argument. ‘He is, for once, innocent. But crazed. Take him home, madam. Keep him home.’
She nodded; perhaps, in part, as thanks for the small mercy of discretion.
‘And Mr Marsden. You wear a bee badge: a code in our crime. In your case, I find it a harmless relic of your early failed endeavours as a genuine apiarist.’
Dunne nodded to Sam Terry. ‘Another greedy man. When Signor Bello died at your inn, you were on the spot. But as the body was found, you appeared to run and hide upstairs. Even though the first alarm was for a non-existent fire, it was an odd reaction; surely upstairs was no escape route in a fire. Were you a killer on the run to a hide-out?
‘No. But you do have a deep secret. At the scene of the castrato’s death, I was intrigued by your use of the formal phrase, “No money, no service and my door stayed shut.” They were words written by the seventeenth-century French playwright Jean Racine. And when Dr Owens repeated the Roman philosopher Seneca’s expression, “Anyone can stop a man’s life, but no one his death,” you accurately completed the allusion to “a thousand doors” opening onto it. You ran upstairs to save a library from the “fire”. An associate found your books – Racine, not Racing; Accius, not Accounts; and Bacon, nothing rasher than Francis or Roger! – and your secret: you can read and write. Even the Greek Epicurus is to your taste!
‘Why do you feign illiteracy? Does playing the unlettered philistine give you some advantage in hard dealings? No matter – I’m happy for you.’ Sam Terry just shrugged and stared stonily ahead.
‘Less happily,’ the Patterer went on, ‘I have had to judge the conduct of people close to me. From the start of the affair I have had to consider whether one man in particular was a thief, a traitor and, logically, a killer…
‘Dr Thomas Owens.’
Chapter Fifty
‘But the Emperor has nothing on at all!’ cried a little child.
– Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes (1836)
The doctor, cool in the face of life and death, was stoic as the Patterer ploughed on with his doubts: he told the guests how Dr Owens had discovered the tiny bag with the gold button in Creighton’s clenched dead hand.
‘There had to be more than Dr Owens admitted about his links, however long ago, with Napoleon Bonaparte. He was privy to so many private details and now he instantly recognised that the sachet held a poison – and he even knew there was more than one poison – without having had the time or opportunity to analyse the bag’s contents.
‘And I came across a painting in which the French artist Horace Vernet depicts Bonaparte farewelling his beloved Imperial Guard on 20 April 1814, as he left for his first exile, on Elba. Our doctor is in that picture, in a French uniform!’
Thomas Owens interrupted him with a loud burst of laughter. ‘Ah, Dunne, you have found me out – but not from that last clue. The picture is not compromising. I wasn’t with Vernet, or Napoleon, in April fourteen years ago. What you don’t know is that the artist, a very dear friend, actually painted that scene retrospectively – in 1825 – and I was in France as a peacetime visitor. Vernet painted my face among the many in the crowd as a private joke. Artists often do that – why, they say that even in some of Rome’s most saintly frescoes you can see, hidden away, the face of Michelangelo. Church masons and woodcarvers did it too.’ He smiled. ‘Why, Leonardo da Vinci considered it … Chided for delaying completion of The Last Supper in Milan, he threatened to use the complaining abbot’s face to represent Judas!’
He shook his head and sighed. ‘I see I must reluctantly break my healer’s oath to explain how I know so much about Boney.
‘I attended him, as a doctor, at Waterloo. I saw the warlord when he was most vulnerable, literally stripped of all the threads of power and glory. It happened like this…
‘In the dark of night-time, before the battle, I was to inspect a squad of British stretcher-bearers near a fortified farmhouse called Hougoumont, a position we knew would be desperately and bloodily defended by the 52nd Regiment and the Guards. I must have strayed, for I was captured by French voltigeurs – “vaulters” – their name for skirmishers, like our “Greenjacket” riflemen.’
Major Mitchell nodded in understanding: he had served in the 2nd Battalion of the Rifle Brigade’s 95th Regiment during the Peninsular War.
Thomas Owens had a faraway look. ‘I don’t know why they did not dispatch or disable me on the spot. That happened to 20000 of our troops the next day. Anyway, I was herded back behind enemy lines. At a farmhouse I later learnt was called Le Caillou, I was summoned to a room where, to my astonishment, I met Bonaparte. An English-speaking aide (Boney did not speak or write our tongue, y’know) examined my pack of medical equipment. Was I a surgeon? Did I give my parole? Yes? Then treat this person; his own doctors have lost their way.
‘So, I treated “this person”, relying on my schoolboy French. He could not easily pass water – he was suffering from dysuria – so I helped him to lean against a wall and strain, while manipulating his prostate. He also complained of haemorrhoids. They were very bad, so protruding and painful. These were the very ones of which I would have expected to find traces at the post mortem in ’21 but did not. There was not much I could do, but I believe I eased some of his suffering. I told him his doctors should apply leeches to reduce the swelling of his piles. He was obviously not really fit to command his vast forces. Perhaps the outcome of the next day’s battle was already affected.
‘He was naked when I examined him. I asked him about the sachet hung around his neck and he told me it was his passeport in case of disaster. He just as freely told me of its contents, in detail.
‘Why did I not kill him? Or at least not try to ease his pain? Because I was a doctor and he was my patient. And because, at that time I was compromised: to many, my actions would be suspect. Perhaps I was simply a coward.’
Owens waved away his demons. ‘He arranged safe passage for me back to our lines, but there was no need to tell my story. By the time I was able to report to anyone, the tide of battle had turned to the Duke’s side.
‘Having been that close, why did I accept, albeit reluctantly, that I had seen him dead on St Helena? Well, it was six years on from our meeting in a darkened farmhouse and I suppose I saw what I expected to see. And bear in mind that his face had never been my focus – just his prostate and his fundament!’
The doctor drained his glass. ‘Now do you understand why I have never before talked about it? To some, I would always be a traitor.’
The Patterer was relieved and embarrassed. He had taken the painting, literally, at face value and openl
y doubted a friend. He hoped Owens would forgive him. Perhaps the doctor was glad to have got it off his chest.
Dunne was now thankful that the Governor had already taken him into his confidence and explained why Captain Rossi’s recent actions and manner had been so strange, marked by an uncharacteristic secrecy and unease. Again, Dunne’s judgement had been clouded, this time by the knowledge of Rossi’s background, which, like Bonaparte’s, lay in Corsica. This connection turned out to be the key to the Captain’s problem, but not a sinister one.
As Darling had privately explained, ‘Rossi has always believed he is a fully fledged British subject. Certainly, he was born French in 1776 in Corsica, but when he was eighteen Britain took control and the young man joined our army. He has soldiered for many years – and has served the Crown in other ways.’ The Patterer of course knew the stories that Rossi had been a spy.
‘However,’ the Governor had continued, ‘he now finds that in law he is an alien, and he fears for his rights and properties here. One may think that a bitter man would turn on the nation rejecting him. The same man, suddenly fearing being landless, might steal. But, no, Rossi’s injustice is being overcome, through my intercession with the authorities back in England. Our good Captain is not our bad man.’
The Patterer turned suddenly to Miss Susannah Hathaway. ‘Even our charming visitor roused the suspicions of my inquiring mind, when she started to praise the fighting qualities of a certain Captain Porter. David Porter: the name finally came to me. Now I had to decide whether Miss Hathaway was simply an American abroad, one naturally proud of, yet sometimes prickly about, her young nation’s military prowess – or if she had another motive.
‘For, picture David Porter – an American pirate, whose frigate, the Essex, blows into the Pacific where it preys on unarmed whalers and others. He captures or sinks seventeen vessels before two Royal Navy warships trap him off Chile and batter the Essex into surrender.
