by Greg Pyers
OTTO HAD SEEN THE first star before Tom returned. He first knew of his assistant’s being there by the cry he made on seeing the rope gone. And then there he was, out on the railings, peering into the dark.
‘Otto!’
‘I’m here.’
‘Thank God! I have a horse. And rope. I’ll let it down.’ Otto noted, with approval, Tom’s good judgement in deferring any observations and questions.
The rope arrived, with a loop tied. Otto placed a foot therein and gave Tom the all-clear to pull, with the stipulation that the horse be paused after eight feet so Otto could collect the bundle still affixed to the wall of the shaft. The execution may have been unrefined, but this enterprise would be a success after all.
AT TOM’S INSISTENCE, OTTO was to make straight for the Victoria Swimming Baths.
‘I’ll take the evidence, and when you’re good and cleaned up, we’ll examine it, and decide what to do next, because …’ Tom held up the chopped end of the rope, ‘someone tried to kill you tonight, Otto, my friend.’
Otto nodded his concurrence with the plan, and was privately grateful for Tom’s taking matters in hand. For now.
‘I shall bring you clothes from your hotel room,’ Tom said. ‘You take the horse. I’ll return him tomorrow. And here’s a shilling for the bath.’
All this attention was an unfamiliar experience for Otto, at least in his adult life. He expected it was akin to the kind a married man might have, and he fancied he might like more of it. Tom Chuck seemed born to deal with a crisis. A lesser man — Walker, for example — would be falling about in stitches at the sight and smell of him. Right now, though, his appearance was not his most pressing concern; the night was upon them, and with its chill air, Otto was already in a lively shiver. At least under the cover of darkness, he would go by the streets unnoticed. And not just because he was drenched in sewage; an attempt on his life had just been made, after all.
‘Half a mile east along Raglan,’ Tom said, and with a heave, helped Otto into the saddle and set him off at a brisk trot.
ARCHDEACON CRAWFORD WAS AT the cell door promptly after the evening meal. He’d learned that with their bellies full, the day done, and the promise of sleep, prisoners were generally rendered docile. He was hoping he might find David Rose in such a mood, or at least one of resignation.
While the clergyman had been deeply troubled by an obdurate resistance in Rose to the acceptance of his fate, he was even more deeply troubled by his own part in the publication of the letters to the paper, for these had only encouraged Rose in his delusion. Crawford had, naively he believed, thought that their writing may have been for Rose the catharsis necessary to clear the way to repentance. Alas, Crawford feared he had only exacerbated matters, for Rose was insisting that he write still more, as if innocence could be proved by repetition — and insisting even though the execution order had been issued. It was well past time, Crawford knew, to be indulging Rose’s fantasy; the fact was that the court had found him guilty and that he would depart this earth in three days. It was time that his soul be readied for eternity. This, not the writing of impotent letters, or shielding the condemned man from the truth, was Crawford’s sacred charge, and he was determined now, in the little time that remained, to carry it out. As the guard turned the key and slid the bolt, Archdeacon Crawford steeled himself to his mission.
OTTO WASN’T ENTIRELY HAPPY to have his clothes shoved into the fire. The cotton shirt was a gift from Helga, and the warm woollen trousers were of the most agreeable fit. Of course, he’d had no choice; no amount of scrubbing and soaking could ever remove the raw sewage now embedded in their warp and weft. And there were his leather boots, so very nicely worn-in, so very thoroughly ruined. Still, he could console himself that, at least in its demise, his erstwhile attire was serving him well by heating the sixty gallons of water in which he was now steeping.
Otto had paid for precisely twenty minutes’ steeping, and he suspected that if he was ever to mix again in polite society, he would have to take every second of it. The bath was good and deep, and one of a dozen or more in individual cubicles that ringed a room-sized communal pool. Fortunately, this was unoccupied when proprietor Horatio Pensom had led Otto and his shit-plastered hair to his private compartment. Pensom handed him a quarter-brick of the yellowest soap, its smell as strong as its colour, and inspiring confidence in Otto that it would be equal to the task.
‘I reckon you might need all o’ that,’ Pensom had quipped, with a once-over glance. Otto failed to find amusement in the remark, but smiled as if he had; the generosity was deserving of that much.
And so, at last, lying beneath the suds and scum, his most immediate concerns attended to, Otto could appreciate that his unforeseen plunge into the mire had in fact been a great leap forward — figuratively. The collection of a bundle of unknown content and provenance had been his objective, but the cutting of his rope had all but confirmed not only that the bundle was indeed connected to the case, but also that Maggie Stuart’s real killer was still at large. And that he was right here in town! The adventure may have cost him his beloved clobber, but awaiting him in a bloody and shit-caked roll at Chuck’s was an ensemble of inestimably greater importance.
BACK AT TOM’S, OTTO decided that Adeline’s vegetable soup was indubitably the best soup he had ever sipped. Yet with urgent work to be done, he restricted himself to just the one bowl. Tom had placed the evening’s pungent prize on the benchtop in his workroom, a space crowded with the paraphernalia, both arcane and familiar, of the photographic artist. Strong chemical aromas permeated the air, and for these Otto was appreciative, for they masked the odour he was sure still hung about his skin ‘like a fog on the Spree’, as his father might have said. With aprons on, and a lamp in position, the examination could begin. Otto played the surgeon; Tom, his assistant.
‘Scissors?’ Otto said. ‘This is all tied tight in twine.’
Tom handed him a pair, borrowed from Adeline’s sewing box. He looked behind to check she wasn’t there.
‘Otto?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Please don’t think I’m making light of your misfortune today, but because someone cut the rope —’
‘Hold these.’
Otto had cut the twine and handed the scissors back to Tom. He straightened.
‘Yes, Tom, because someone cut the rope, we know there is someone who has a secret.’ He turned to his work, slowly unrolling the sodden fabric. ‘Whoever cut the rope didn’t just turn up by chance; he must have known we were down there — and why. Which has me wondering, how did he know?’
‘But who knew we were going to investigate that shaft? Otto, you can’t possibly stay at the Albert tonight. Whoever tried to drown you will know soon enough that he failed.’
Otto smiled. ‘Thank you, Tom, but I think I shall be safe; the Police Camp is right across the street.’
‘You have some faith in them, then?’
Otto made no comment; his attention was to the job at hand. ‘And what do we have here?’
The entire length of the bundle had been unrolled now, to reveal its composition: a cotton shirt lying face-up atop moleskin trousers, both garments heavily and darkly stained, and at the bottom end, at the hems, where the rolling would have begun, a knife.
‘I am amazed,’ Tom said, and put a hand on Otto’s shoulder. ‘You are a detective without peer!’
Otto leant over the filthy blade.
‘See that, Tom? There’s a hair stuck to it.’ Otto reached for it, and drew it clear between thumb and forefinger.
‘It’s very long,’ Tom said. ‘Twelve inches or more.’
‘What colour was Mrs Stuart’s hair?’
‘Red-brown, as that one appears to be.’
Otto laid the specimen on a sheet of paper. Tom thought to point out that it was paper — quite expensive paper — prepared for a portrait he�
��d be taking tomorrow, but thought better of it.
‘This staining is blood,’ Otto said, sweeping a hand over the shirt. ‘I’ve never seen blood so long after it was spilled.’
‘There’s so much of it! And they found but a speck on David Rose’s shirt. It really is astounding.’
Otto stood back from the bench. ‘Astounding?’
‘I mean, that the police didn’t search the shaft. Don’t you think that’s astounding?’
Otto made a wry smile. ‘If you knew the police as I do, Tom, unsurprising might be the word. Disappointing would be another.’
Otto lifted the knife and turned it in his hand. A sheath knife it was, the kind many a working man might use. And certainly one a murderer might employ. Its two-edged blade was six inches long, an inch wide at its broadest, and tapered to a sharp point. To it adhered a lacework patina of dried blood, which extended less obviously across the wooden hilt. It looked quite new, though the blade on one side had a chip in it, probably from inappropriate usage.
‘We can be sure this is the murder weapon, can’t we?’ Tom said.
Otto returned the knife to the bench. ‘Let’s just say it’s probably the murder weapon. That’s sufficient to be going on with. The police were sure, and look where it led them. Now, where does Doctor Doolittle live?’
FRANK DOOLITTLE’S HOUSE WAS in Camp Street, midway between the Theatre Royal and the Court House, and a testing five-minute walk uphill from Chuck’s London Portrait Gallery. At nine-thirty, it was well past time for social visits, but this was business and it couldn’t wait. The evening was crisp and starlit, and the crunch of their footfall was sharp in the cold air. Daylesford was in quiet repose on this clear winter’s night: yellow light spilled from windows; someone was practising violin. A dog barked; several replied. Otto and Tom reached the top of Albert Street, and turned left at the Albert Hotel into Camp Street. A new sound reached their ears. Otto stopped. He closed his eyes, and a peaceful calm settled across his features as the familiar strains of the Hallelujah chorus came to him across the stillness.
‘Handel?’ he said. ‘In Daylesford?’ He looked at Tom for an explanation of this unexpected treat.
Tom bridled at the implication of Otto’s incredulous tone.
‘Yes, the Daylesford Philharmonic Society are rehearsing. They’re forty-strong — vocalists and players, and they’ve been performing for months now, at the Theatre Royal. I’ve heard they’re very good, actually.’
Otto read Tom’s irritation, and was quick to mollify him.
‘I can hear that they’re very good,’ he said. They resumed their walking. ‘You know, Tom, I’ve always thought that once a photographic artist sets up in a town, can a philharmonic society be far behind? Now, let’s see what the good doctor makes of our bloody knife.’
28
SATURDAY AUGUST 19th
TWO DAYS BEFORE THE DAY OF EXECUTION
DAVID ROSE CURLED TIGHTLY on his canvas mattress and pressed his hands to his ears against the early-morning echoes of metal clanging and squealing, of the gritty footfall of the turnkey on the flagstones, of a mad inmate barking obscenities before being removed to the solitary cells, of another one whistling. He heard the metal flap in his door open, and saw the pannikin of porridge appear through it. He got up and hurried to it before the turnkey let it fall. He had yet to return with it to his mattress when the explosion went off outside and rumbled through the floor beneath his feet. In the silence of the aftermath, the turnkey chattered at him through the flap.
‘Hear that, Rose? They’ve just blasted your grave.’
OTTO HAD AN EARLY breakfast at the Albert, and by seven he was on his way in the dawn gloom to the shaft. He didn’t take up Tom’s offer of accommodation — not in spite of the knowledge that his would-be killer was at large and likely to want to see his business through, but because of it. Time was short, and drawing the killer from cover was his objective now, but not to a household where a woman and child lived. Besides, he was hardly a tethered goat, unprepared and defenceless; he knew a move or two.
There’d been such heavy rain overnight he had grave doubts that any trace would be left of the rope-cutter’s footprints. But if a knife discarded nearly eight months before could be found, it was a reasonable hope that after just fourteen hours, some clue might be lying there for the discovering.
The air was cold and still this morning, and the light thin with the hour and the season. Otto made his way west along Albert Street, past the West of England and Union Hotels, a bakery in full swing, a vegetable plot, several slab huts, and a vacant lot with a cow. He reached Pitman’s at the West Street corner. Otto had no particular view of these so-called ‘refreshment rooms’, many of which were dispersed throughout the town. The standards varied, but the term was understood to be a euphemism for grog shanty, which itself was a euphemism for brothel. To Otto’s mind, whatever particular nature of service was provided by any of these establishments, how grown adults amused themselves was their affair. A man was emerging from Pitman’s now, tucking in his shirt and finger-raking his hair. He nodded a sheepish good morning to Otto, and shuffled off towards the town.
The road became steep here, rising in sixty yards to where George Stuart’s cottage stood cold and empty. He crossed the street and joined the ridge track to the shaft. The going was heavy, and Otto’s second pair of boots was barely up to the task of holding the shifting ground. He slipped and slid, but by and by made it to the scene of last evening’s discovery and near-disaster. He approached the perimeter fence and stood by it while his eyes quartered the ground, rendered a coarse stucco by horse and human traffic.
A man appeared along the path. A short, thickset man he was, with sandy hair and a disposition to conflict, if Otto read his features right. A scowl looked to be his face’s natural expression of repose, unless it was because he was lugging a night can. He reached the barrier fence without making any acknowledgement of Otto’s presence. There he dropped the can to the muddy ground, flipped off the lid, and upended the pungent contents into the foul broth below. Some shit struck the railings that still lay across the mouth. The spatter prompted a ‘Fuck!’ and a little jump back.
Otto decided there was nothing to find here, and began heading back to Chuck’s.
‘You been speaking to my ol’ lady,’ the man said, in a tone that made any denial redundant.
‘Well, seeing as I don’t know who you are, I wouldn’t know,’ Otto lied, for this angry gnome surely could be none other than Joe Latham, though his wife had said he was in Adelaide.
‘You know exactly who I mean, copper: Alice Latham.’
‘Oh, yes. I did pay her a vis —’
Suddenly, the two yards between the two men had become half a yard, so quickly had Joe stepped across the mud. Otto felt himself flinch with the expectation of receiving a fist to the face. The man’s diminutive stature made him all the more threatening, since it was clear he saw Otto’s four inches’ height advantage as no disadvantage to him.
‘Who the hell are you, to be asking my missus questions? Have you no respect for a grieving mother?’
‘First, I’m a detective, that’s who I am, and secondly, of course I have respect.’ Otto noticed that his cool defiance unsettled this angry little man. He pressed further. ‘Why would you object to me asking your wife questions?’
‘Because the murderer of my Maggie has been tried and convicted, but now you want to stir it all up and put her poor broken-hearted mother through all that pain again.’
‘If the wrong man is hanged, that will be no comfort to your wife, or to anyone. Except the real killer.’
Otto was watching Joe’s features very closely. Did they reveal a guilty conscience? It was impossible to tell, with the man’s anger a mask.
‘Do you always empty your nightsoil here, Joe? I’d have thought it a bit out of the way.’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘Well, as this shaft would be the perfect place to dump evidence, maybe you’ve noticed some suspicious activity?’
Joe scoffed. ‘Why don’t you leave well alone? Didn’t you coppers already get all the evidence you need?’
‘That’s what a lot of people think, Joe. But you know what, I think they’ve got the wrong man over there in Castlemaine. I think someone else killed your stepdaughter, and I’m going to prove it. You’d be happy to know the truth, wouldn’t you, Joe? And your grieving wife?’
MUCH AS THEY LIKED, or wanted, to think of Otto Berliner as an irrelevance, some of Daylesford’s police officers could not quite manage to ignore their former colleague when he made an appearance at the station at eight-thirty in the morning. His mere presence brought on a stiffening of faces, a muting of voices, and a quickening of steps. They’d resented his being called in by Nicolson to help with the hunt for David Rose, and they resented him now, coming to prove them all wrong about the very man he’d helped them to apprehend. It was unfortunate, then, for the locals that Superintendent Nicolson happened to be in town from Melbourne this day, for now Otto could ignore them right back. However, when Otto apprised him of his discovery in the shaft, Nicolson had promptly called Sergeant Telford and Detective Walker for a meeting.
‘Gentlemen, Detective Berliner, as you are aware, has been in town these past few days — in his own time, mind — making enquiries.’
‘Yes, we’ve heard, Sir. Into a case that’s done and dusted,’ Telford said, folding his arms and shifting in his seat as if preparing to fart. ‘Crime must have taken a holiday in Melbourne.’
