The Ghost of Waterloo

by Robin Adair

  ‘Of course,’ he said, straight-faced, ‘that drama occurred during the War of 1812.’

  ‘Naturally I’m proud of him,’ said Miss Hathaway. ‘Anyway, he was my uncle.’ Dunne sat back and grinned at her; she smiled back. Anglo-American relations were restored.

  Samuel Terry, however, would not be sidetracked. ‘But you haven’t told us yet. If the gold, the plate, even the silver coin and paper money, were not the real targets – what the devil did the bank thieves want?’

  The Patterer looked across at Ralph Darling, who nodded his consent. ‘In a word,’ said Dunne, ‘gold.’ Again he took pity on those diners not sharing the secret. ‘I’ll add to that by saying more gold, possibly beyond their wildest dreams.

  ‘A battered tin box, also stolen, contained coordinates, written directions – the sole copy, it seems – to a gold strike over the Blue Mountains, near…’ He tailed off at a shake of the head by the Governor. ‘That paper’s secret is now in the possession of a master-thief and murderer who would treat with invaders and rebels.’

  His Excellency was blunt. ‘Who?’

  Dunne pointed around the tables and stopped. ‘Who do you think?’

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Cry, ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.

  – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar (1599)

  The members of the group at which Nicodemus Dunne pointed remained calm as they faced him across the table. The paterfamilias William Balcombe stared back blandly and pursed his lips. His wife’s only emotion was to drum her fingers lightly on the tablecloth. Thomas pinched an earlobe with fingers stippled by artists’ paints. Grenville toyed with a coffee spoon.

  Mrs Betsy Abell was the most animated, but, Dunne noted, she was always of a nervous disposition. Who had described her as ‘a large, spring-loaded doll’? The answer struck him: of course, it was in the writings of Hyacinthe de Bougainville, from three years earlier. Ah, she, too, had known him well enough.

  ‘So,’ the Patterer began quietly. ‘Is it you we are after, Mr Balcombe? The members of your family were among the few to forge friendly links with Napoleon Bonaparte, from the moment he arrived on St Helena. Your career suffered a setback – a most severe one – when you were dismissed from the island for doing deals for the illustrious visitor. You sold possessions for him, very discreetly. I think you bought some of them yourself.

  ‘You languished in an impoverished limbo in England before your fortunes turned and you came here, with your family, as Treasurer in April 1824.

  ‘But there was more trouble. A year or so ago, His Excellency here investigated “inappropriate” use of Bank of New South Wales funds. You had profited from these dealings. To be fair, you escaped censure.’ Dunne did not suggest that Mr Balcombe was protected by the rumours that the Treasurer was a by-blow of the King’s father.

  ‘I’m truly sorry to see,’ he added, ‘that you are ill now and that the future of your family is unclear. Did desperation drive you to grand theft and treason?’ The Treasurer said nothing.

  Dunne’s gaze paused at Mrs Balcombe. ‘Yes, madam, Bonaparte was right: you do resemble la belle de Beauharnais.’

  The lady blushed, but the Patterer had already settled his gaze on Thomas. ‘You are a deeply unhappy young man, thwarted in your burning ambition to be a creative artist. And you made a close bond with the General, one of your few true friendships on that lonely island, or here for that matter. How far would your loyalty go?

  ‘And Grenville … You are not really a Balcombe, are you? I confess I jumped to the wrong conclusion when we first met.’ Grenville nodded and the Patterer continued: ‘Your father was lost in the Battle of the Nile, or Aboukir Bay, at which Mr Balcombe also served?’

  Grenville nodded again. ‘I arrived on St Helena as a lad, told Mr Balcombe the sad story and he honoured his late comrade-in-arms and took me in.’

  The senior Balcombe agreed.

  Dunne smiled. ‘And last, but far from least, we have Mrs Betsy Abell, at thirteen introduced to the fallen Emperor, who called you “the Rosebud of St Helena”.’

  Mrs Abell wriggled, quite deliciously.

  ‘You danced with him, stroked his hair, spoke to him in French. We know, from our Dr Owens, that his English was poor…’

  The Governor suddenly interrupted. ‘But none of these people surely can be Bonaparte – who must now be an old man, in – what? – his late fifties?’

  ‘You are correct, of course,’ said the Patterer. ‘But Mr Potts, of the rival bank, sowed a seed in my mind – although one long in germination, I confess – when he referred to a certain French coin as a rare specimen with the then-Emperor on both sides.

  ‘I came to the exciting realisation that we have here the case of two Napoleons – one old dog directing the other, a devoted younger body executing the orders of the mastermind. And who is to say this person is not a woman? It was dark and perhaps Bagley made a mistake about the gender of the speaker who baited Sir Hudson Lowe. May I say that Miss Hathaway, an expert, tells me that both Mrs Balcombe and Mrs Abell have low voices; if they sang, they would be contraltos.’

  ‘Be that as it may,’ observed Alexander Harris. ‘If Boney has been in Sydney for years, why hasn’t anyone seen him, recognised him?’

  ‘Ah, but how do we visualise him? Why, either as a general, in cocked hat and impressive uniform, or as royalty, in ermine robes, crown and jewelled ornamentation. Would any of you identify him in a changed role, say as a servant or lowly worker? But you press me to denounce, at least, the active criminal alter ego…’

  The Patterer paused and clicked his tongue, as he had been instructed. Munito rose to his side, grinning foolishly. He took his hand from a pocket and passed it over the dog’s muzzle. With a theatrical gesture florid enough to delight the impresario Mr Barnett Levey, he declaimed: ‘Munito, cherche Bonaparte!’

  Munito padded around the table and stopped, then looked up, growled and bared his fangs.

  Chapter Fifty-two

  ‘In all my experience …I have never met with such a thing as a trifle yet.’

  – Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (1868)

  The object of Munito’s disaffection, a scowling Grenville, gave the Patterer a look as black as his mouth. ‘Why,’ he hissed, ‘would you link me with a Bonapartist plot? On the say-so of a bloody dog, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Oh,’ said Dunne equably, ‘I say it again, you’re not Grenville Balcombe, are you?’

  ‘I have never said that I was. I thought we had been through all that.’

  ‘True, I misunderstood that part of the puzzle, right from the start. I imagined you were a natural son. It doesn’t really matter in the end.’

  ‘Indeed it doesn’t – it’s a mere trifle,’ challenged Grenville. ‘You made the mistake – I’ve never hidden from anyone here my family name, Newton.’

  ‘Not even from the census-taker,’ agreed the Patterer. ‘But even that fact, another trifle in itself, helped me confirm a suspicion that had begun to build earlier. I received clues when Dr Halloran told me more about the Battles of Aboukir Bay (or the Nile, if you wish) and, subsequently, Trafalgar.’ Dunne explained the sad roles and fate of Admiral Villeneuve; and he spelled out how the names seemed to translate together: Villeneuve–Newton.

  ‘Coincidence,’ scoffed the accused man. ‘That means nothing!’

  ‘Ah, but it does. I say that you like to live dangerously, on the knife edge of your deceptions.’ Dunne’s wave now embraced all the diners. ‘On St Helena that day ten years ago, Grenville could not resist taunting Sir Hudson Lowe with that deliberate misquotation from Shakespeare.’

  He turned to Mr William Balcombe. ‘Tell us the whereabouts of you and your family on 18 March 1818 and what you were doing.’

  The older man looked ill and distressed as he stared at Thomas and Grenville. ‘Why, we were on the island dock, as you well know, about to sail.’

  ‘That proves nothing!’ spat Grenville. ‘And Lowe and the soldie
r must have imagined they heard something.’

  The Patterer shrugged. ‘Well, I’m sure we can eventually prove that you had no father, no fitting Newton in the Royal Navy, who was killed at the Nile. But that, of course, would take many months. Oh, yes, we’ll prove you imposed yourself as such a son, on the Balcombes.

  ‘In the meantime, let me point out a few immediately revealing “trifles”. I should have realised you were counterfeit when we parted after our first meeting. In a slip – or, perhaps, yet another flash of arrogance? – you said your father had served on the William Tell.

  ‘Of course, there was no such ship in the British fleet … but, Admiral Villeneuve was in command of one in the French line – it was called,’ he paused for effect, ‘Guillaume Tell!

  ‘But you’re not even his son; we know he never had one.’

  Grenville was still defiant. ‘Even if that were true, how can you be so sure I have colluded with Napoleon Bonaparte in crime? Yes, I had a childhood friendship, but…’ He tailed off.

  Dunne did not relent. ‘I don’t – yet – know exactly how you really came to wash up on the island and join forces with the General. Perhaps you’ll tell us. But the planned revolt here, the robbery and certainly the first murder seemed to involve Bonaparte – and an aide. The person had to be an intimate from St Helena, entangled in the escape method; and it all comes down to you. Even that is evidence.’ He pointed at Grenville’s face. ‘The teeth: those and, by common consent, Bonaparte’s have been stained black by an unusual addiction, harmless otherwise, to liquorice. The dog was simply primed to seek that exotic scent.’

  The Patterer turned to address the table at large. ‘I say that, on the island as a youngster, Grenville absorbed as much of the General’s undoubted magnetism as did Miss Betsy and Thomas. More, as it turned out. From then on he chose to ape his hero slavishly, in mannerisms and sometimes even accent. He would be Napoleon Bonaparte.

  ‘Consider his clothing today – chestnut frockcoat, blue trousers; he even has under his chair an old-fashioned bicorn hat – all items of the prisoner’s civilian “uniform”.’ He addressed Grenville. ‘May we see more closely that ornament around your throat? Dominic, an opinion?’

  The erstwhile cleric leant across and pronounced it a medal of St Barbara. The old soldier, Alexander Harris, further identified the lady as the patron saint of artillerymen – Napoleon’s first and favourite corps.

  ‘He even,’ added the Patterer, ‘must have “borrowed” his idol’s most cherished personal effect, his poison sachet. That was only very recently, but let us examine the past.

  ‘They had found each other again when Mr Balcombe took up his official post here four years ago and Grenville arrived with the family. Boney had drifted here soon after his escape from the island, which had been arranged by his young accomplice. Grenville, no doubt, freed him and hid him – or did he pay a bribe for a passage? – on that voyage.

  ‘They parted at the first port of call, perhaps Cape Town, or Rio; the prisoner did not dare continue on to Europe. But as I say, fate would bring them back together. Here, a disguised Bonaparte – and “Prosper Mendoza” was not such a bad choice of name; the owner could never dare reclaim it and no one here was looking for a dead South Atlantic criminal – plotted with a French visitor on the ’26 d’Urville expedition. The reborn Three Bees would arrive for the climax of the revolt, as indeed it did recently.’

  Dunne paused for a sip of wine. ‘But, by then, the once-potent Emperor was too old, too ailing, to lead a fight. So he used Grenville as his powerful marionette. There were other reasons for my thinking that a second Napoleon was active.’ He again addressed his target directly: ‘You made two serious mistakes when engaging the criminal named Dingle in the hotel paddock near the bank. You did assume a French accent, but you called the man who had saved the General’s life at Arcola Colonel Moulin, instead of Muiron. The General would never have confused the name of his saviour.

  ‘And you wrote two notes. Now, unlike our Mr Terry, Bonaparte could not speak or write fluent English. That’s why he liked exchanging French with your Betsy and Italian with an island doctor, Barry O’Meara. Oh, to be sure, he may have learnt new language in the last ten or so years here, but the notes in the paddock were written by a left-handed person – and the General was, is, a right-hander.’

  The Patterer reached into a coat pocket. ‘I have here your note, accepting the Governor’s luncheon request. That was the whole point of sending out invitations, to get personal responses. You are left-handed, the only diner here so challenged. Literally sinister evidence.

  ‘So, it was all going to plan – until the puppet now decided to pull the strings. One day he had overheard Major Mitchell discussing – with Mr Balcombe? – the existence of the gold-find chart and where it was lodged. That changed the master plan, forever.

  ‘To the devil with mere revolution and a fiddling bank robbery! All Grenville now really wanted was the surveyor’s notebook, which he knew was in a tin box in the vault. Still, he humoured the old man and he was fanatically loyal enough to go through the motions of the revolt. Anyway, it was dangerously enjoyable.

  ‘People who passed the “Do you like violets” test would have to produce out-of-date holey dollars and dumps as identity discs. At the hospital that day with you, Owens, I failed the first test. That tardy attendant was a disguised Grenville, there hoping to find the treasured poison bag – perhaps even the map – still with Creighton’s body. And he couldn’t resist “testing” my accidental violet hatband.’

  Dunne suddenly changed tack and smiled at the accused man. ‘By the by, I must compliment you on the clue you gave Sir Hudson Lowe – no one guessed it for a whole decade.’ He chuckled. ‘How apt to choose something from All’s Well that Ends Well.’

  Grenville sneered at him. ‘Fool! It was from As You Like It!’

  Dunne smiled, a little sadly. ‘Ah, Mr Newton, Mr Newton … I have never named the relevant play today. How could you know … unless your spy, Cornelius, told you? Or unless you were the speaker, on the island?’

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Fortune’s a right whore:

  If she give aught, she deals it in small parcels,

  That she may take away all at one swoop.

  John Webster, The White Devil (1612)

  Grenville Newton shook his head and laughed bitterly. He began to clap slowly. ‘Congratulations, Mr Dunne. It seems you have undone me! I fell into your trap – even after you had warned of my dangerous impetuosity! I suppose you deserve to know the truth.

  ‘Which is that I don’t know who I really am – so why shouldn’t I be the proxy for the man once the most powerful and feared in the world? I began life as a “son of a gun”…’ He saw the incomprehension on some faces. ‘That is the expression used for children such as I. Yes, I was conceived on the gun deck of a British ship of the line. My father was some nameless gunner and my mother a portside harlot who had come aboard, as is a trollop’s wont, lifted her skirts and let him have her in the shadow of a 24-pounder. Very romantic! He was a good shot – or a bad one? – and I was the result.

  ‘I ran away to sea – where else? – as a young child, and the war was still on, which meant the navy needed more and more bodies. I thought I was luckier than most ship’s boys when I had the chance of education as a “snotty”. Do you know why they call a midshipman that? We were children – some only ten or eleven – and we often sobbed with fear, loneliness, fatigue and sodomy. So all middies had stout buttons sewn onto our cuffs to stop us from sniffling and crying onto our sleeves. That’s when I began to hate the navy and Britain.

  ‘And that’s where I heard more of Napoleon’s exploits and those of poor Admiral Villeneuve. I felt a kinship, for the first time in my short life, and so, when I jumped ship in Cape Town I determined to get to St Helena. Oh, the marines on my ship searched ashore for me, but I was sheltered by Dutchmen there. They hate the English too. I had some savings and pickings from shi
pmates and I took passage on a merchant trader to St Helena. There I became Grenville (I believe it is my given name) Newton, with an impressive forged letter apparently from the poor widow, begging Mr Balcombe for help. I declare he gave this unstintingly and unquestioningly, though he did not know the supplicant.

  ‘Even though I met the Emperor-in-exile and became devoted to him and he a father-figure to me, our lives may have rubbed along uneventfully – except that the stakes were raised.’

  Grenville Newton smiled thinly. ‘Is it treason to save a man’s life? To save him from being murdered? The General, as islanders were forced to address him, confided to me one day in 1816 that he believed he was being poisoned. I was horrified. Poisoned by whom? The restored Bourbons? The British? Perhaps they were weary of the cost of his upkeep – 92000 pounds a year. And I knew that he had once accused Sir Hudson Lowe, saying, “Shall I tell you the truth, sir?…I believe you have received orders to kill me…” To me, Lowe had always seemed hard but proper.

  ‘The Emperor’s suspicions grew as he suffered increasing bouts of illness. I wondered if it could be an insider. The Count de Montholon was seen as a royalist and hated the General because of his wife’s affair with him. The Count was called the “chamberlain”, but we children called him the “chamber-pot”.’ Betsy Abell giggled and nodded.

  ‘I may have dismissed the story as simply the product of a fevered brain – if I, too, had not been poisoned at Longwood House. My friend had his own private supply of wine from the Cape and he alone drank it, until he invited me to share his exclusive vintage. Each time I took this wine I became sick afterwards. Now I believed him.

  ‘I couldn’t allow a man – not even a fallen enemy – to die like that. And so, when he asked my help to escape, I listened and I acted. As you say, two things came together early in ’18. I was leaving that coming March and had nothing to lose. He accepted my plan. My other family’ – he waved a hand at the Balcombes – ‘knew nothing of it.