Death and the Running Patterer: A Curious Murder Mystery

by Robin Adair

  It was what was left of a human head. An exploded human head.

  Dunne gagged; it took him a major effort not to vomit on the floor. He had seen plenty of men and women die on the ship that had carried its cargo of convicts, including him. And violent death was a commonplace in the colony. Locals were used to seeing dangling hanged bodies, once eight in a row, over the walls of the George Street jail. But this, this thing, was the worst he had ever seen, a catastrophe of ruined bone and scattered, bloodied tissue. He turned away, shaking.

  “Here’s the rest,” said Rossi quietly, pointing to the floor in the shadowy corner behind the press.

  The headless body lay sprawled on its belly, arms and legs splayed. Dunne had never seen so much blood.

  Rossi seemed calm as he asked, “How can you fit a head under the press?”

  “Yes, well,” said Dunne, collecting himself, “the assembly of type normally sits on the bed and then there’s only room, between this type and the descending mechanism, for a padded frame and the paper about to receive the impression. But, if you haven’t placed any type form or paper frame, or any other paraphernalia between the bed and the downward thrust—well, there must be just enough room for a head. Any locksmith will tell you that a human body can be squeezed through a window open no more than six inches. Just ask any of the thousands of burglars here.”

  Rossi held up his hands in mock surrender. “I didn’t know you understood so much about printing.”

  Dunne smiled wanly, starting to feel less queasy. “You don’t frequent newspaper offices without learning a little. And you should know, Monsieur, that on arrival I was assigned to The Gazette—before the outdoor life called.”

  Rossi nodded and turned his attention back to the body. “The decapitation was a clean cut. How? Knife? Sword? It’s too neat for an axe.”

  The patterer looked around what was left of the composing room. Near the press stood a guillotine for cutting paper to size. “There.” He pointed. “That blade would do the job as well as any in the Terror. And, judging by the blood around it, it did. But, Captain, the burning question—if you’ll pardon my lapse in taste—is, who is our victim?”

  They steeled themselves to look more closely at the shattered remains. Once the head had been eased from the maw of the press, they could see that the face was blanched from loss of blood but still showed hints of a leathery tan. The long hair was drawn back into a pigtail tied with a black lace ribbon. Dunne examined the head carefully, especially the right cheek and temple.

  When they turned over the body, they found it was dressed in a shabby linen jacket over a cotton shirt. The trousers were of a rough weave and the chest-high linen apron was soiled with black drops and smears. All the clothes were otherwise clean, apart from where gouts of blood had fouled them. The boots, although well worn and often repaired, were clean and polished.

  Rossi pointed to the apron and the corpse’s blackened fingers. “A printer?”

  “Most certainly,” the patterer agreed. “But he was also once—and not too long ago—a soldier.”

  At Rossi’s raised eyebrows, Dunne pointed to the victim’s face. “What is left of the right temple and cheek is heavily pocked with deeply ingrained black specks. A soldier can never rid himself of the tiny powder burns and spots he gets there from firing a musket. I’d also wager that his teeth are blackened from biting cartridges. And the boots are army issue and kept in good order from habit.”

  Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of two constables carrying a litter and a sheet of canvas. They were to remove the remains to the hospital in Macquarie Street for examination.

  “If this is connected to the other murder and our murderer is deranged,” mused Rossi, “is it possible he’s left another message for us?”

  The fire had spared no scrap of paper that might have offered a clue.

  “Let’s see what he might have been working at,” said the patterer. “It’s a forlorn hope, I know, but it may give us something.”

  There were no complete page forms of typesetting, as far as Dunne could see. Type was usually so scarce that any page had to be broken up as soon as it was printed and the characters distributed for use again. But then Rossi called out to Dunne; all he could find that looked like new work was a narrow and shallow metal tray—a galley—part-filled with lines of type.

  “Can you read what the type says?” asked Dunne.

  Rossi stood facing the open end of the unfinished galley. “I can’t really make much of it.” He bent closer and squinted. “It’s gibberish to me. My eyes aren’t what they used to be . . . But wait, the last line is clearer, after a fashion.” He produced a quizzing glass. “It says, no, I give up. It just seems to say ‘exobus SISSE.′ Latin, perhaps?”

  Any further discussion was halted by two new arrivals, who suddenly burst into the ruined room. The first was a short elderly man in clerical dress. He was followed by a figure who took all Dunne’s attention.

  It was a very young and very beautiful woman. She was tiny but perfectly formed—as far as the patterer could tell through the barriers of her walking-out ensemble, which covered her from chin to toe. Her full, high-necked red dress was frilled from knee to ankle and its leg-of-mutton sleeves ended where her white gloves began. Her tiny waist was nipped in by a broad belt that matched the long ribbons falling from a large feathered confection of a hat. Blond hair touched her shoulders.

  In a town starved of women, she was a vision.

  The young man was in love. Or lust. He didn’t know which. Or care.

  CHAPTER SIX

  And when a lady’s in the case,

  You know, all other things give place.

  —John Gay, Fables (1727)

  RELUCTANTLY TEARING HIS ATTENTION FROM THE FAIR NEWCOMER′S solemn, handsome face, Nicodemus Dunne recognized the man as Laurence Hynes Halloran, publisher of The Gleaner.

  From what the patterer could gather, Dr. Halloran had been an academic and schoolmaster in England and a chaplain in the Royal Navy at Trafalgar. In 1818, it seemed, his respectability had suffered a setback when he received seven years for forgery. On regaining his freedom he had opened first a school then a newspaper.

  “Rossi . . . Dunne!” he said, seeming flustered. “Well, gentlemen. This is a pretty pickle. My dear, should you be here? All this, ah, blood ...” At this he shooed his lovely companion out the door, even though she had not seemed at all distressed.

  Halloran waved as she departed then turned back to Dunne and Rossi. “Goodness, my manners . . . that was Miss Rachel Dormin. She earns her living as a seamstress, but has evinced an interest in the workings of our colonial society at all levels and I have attached her to our intelligence-gathering enterprise. I believe in equal opportunity for the genders, you know.”

  He gestured defensively, as if expecting an attack from the other, less-enlightened males. When none was forthcoming he came back to the matter at hand. “This is terrible, terrible. I heard the news from one of your men.”

  “Do you know who the poor fellow is?” asked Rossi.

  “But of course! He must be Will Abbot, the printer and publisher of the New World. I helped him to set up his endeavor.”

  “You would help a rival?”

  “Of course. It was my Christian duty.”

  “Was he a free man?” asked Dunne.

  “Naturally. He was an old soldier with an honorable discharge.”

  “Do you perhaps know his regiment?”

  “As it happens, I do. I believe it was our own 57th.”

  At this, Rossi and the patterer exchanged glances, then Dunne went off on what seemed to Halloran to be a tangent: “Doctor, you are a man of erudition. How or where would we find out about an arcane piece of Hebraism, something that appears to be a cipher perhaps?”

  The publisher preened himself. “Why, sir, it may sound immodest but you may do no better than ask my good self. I have deeply studied Hebraic lore and indeed did mission work among Jewish people
in the East End of London.”

  “Well, sir,” said Dunne, “what or who is a zuzim?”

  “Ah,” replied Halloran. “Are you familiar with this popular rhyme, which only the other day I heard some children in the street reciting?

  This is the man all tattered and torn,

  That kissed the maiden all forlorn,

  That milked the cow with the crumpled horn,

  That tossed the dog,

  That worried the cat, that killed the rat . . .

  That dwelt in the house that Jack built.

  “Et cetera. Well, your mention of the word zuzim brings to mind that in a similar vein there is a Hebrew parable. It goes, in essence, if my memory serves me right:Then came the Most Holy, blessed be He, and slew,

  The angel of death who had slain,

  The slaughterer who had slaughtered,

  The ox which had drunk,

  The water which had extinguished,

  The fire which had burned,

  The staff which had smitten,

  The dog which had bitten,

  The cat which had devoured,

  The kid which my father had bought for two zuzim.”

  Dr. Halloran paused, pleased with his performance; then added, “The sainted Isaac Newton had the right of it when he wrote, as you will doubtless recall, ′Actioni contrarium semper et aequalem esse reactionem.’ ”

  Rossi looked blankly uncomfortable, but Dunne surprised both his companions (and perhaps even the shades of his childhood teachers) by nodding and saying, “Yes, I see, ‘to every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.’ ”

  “Indeed,” said Halloran enthusiastically. “The Hebrew verse simply means that life is a chain.”

  Dunne nodded. “And there seems to be a running theme of retribution. Be that as it may, would I be correct in thinking that two zuzim are worth about a halfpenny?” The meaning of the coin in the governor’s letter had constantly nagged him.

  Halloran looked surprised. “Why, my dear sir, how did you know? Yes, indeed, the amount would be a halfpenny.”

  “And how widely known would the parable be?”

  “Why, it would not be all that hard to stumble across. Possibly it could be found at the subscription library and reading rooms. Mr. McGarvie may well have it at his stationery warehouse. Even I have it in a volume at my office. And, of course, there have been Jews in Sydney since the arrival of the First Fleet.”

  Dunne nodded thoughtfully. He needed time to think about all that had happened. Even though he had found a Gentile instead of a Jew who knew the answer, the first riddle had indeed led them to a strange verse recording a cycle of faraway violence. Yet here and now they seemed involved in just such a cycle.

  But where to next? Perhaps the corpse held more clues, he thought. He beckoned to Captain Rossi to follow and left Dr. Halloran idly wondering if a fire-damaged cast-iron Stanhope press would be a good investment. Although, if pushed, Halloran would have been the first to admit he had scant knowledge of printing.

  Outside, the patterer hoped to see Miss Dormin again, but she had disappeared.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Riddles lie here, or in a word,

  Here lies blood . . .

  —John Cleveland, “Epitaph on the Earl of Strafford” (1647)

  ROSSI AND YOUNG DUNNE WALKED BACK ALONG KENT STREET. The magistrate planned to turn off after a few blocks and return to his court, while the patterer continued across town to his ultimate destination, the hospital beside the Hyde Park prisoners’ barracks.

  “Why were we sent the halfpenny with the verse?” Dunne wondered aloud. “Apart from equaling two zuzim, what was its relevance?”

  “I don’t know,” admitted Rossi “but I suppose it may be significant.”

  “Let’s be logical,” said Dunne. “Was the killer making the point that he was changing the parable’s original currency into English coin?”

  “Very well. So?”

  “So, does it mean that he has also given much of the parable’s wheel of death and destruction an English context? By ‘English’ I mean here, in Sydney. Yes, there is still an angel of death—our quarry. But forget the ox, the water, fire, staff, dog and cat, and reckon that, instead, there are Englishmen—here—at risk. And so far it seems it all has something to do with soldiery.”

  “And the kid?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we can forget that, too. Or perhaps there is an English local equivalent that started the circle here.”

  “The victims in the verse kill each other,” pointed out Rossi. “Our victims seem to have a common nemesis.”

  “Perhaps our angel would be happy for them to kill each other. But if they won’t oblige, he will.”

  Rossi grunted. “You’ve overlooked the end of the loop—the Most Holy, who slew the angel of death.”

  “Yes, well ...” The patterer had a sudden thought. “Perhaps our angel wants to be caught and punished. If so, he’s not just taunting us, he’s guiding us! So we must be about to receive another clue. Or there’s one we’ve overlooked.”

  “Well,” sighed the magistrate, “it’s a poser, whichever way you look at it.”

  The patterer stopped in his tracks, turned to the magistrate and asked urgently, “What did you just say?”

  “I simply said that it’s a poser ...”

  “No, no—the last bit; you said, ‘Whichever way you look at it.’ ”

  “Well?”

  “Well, indeed! Tell me, how exactly were you standing when you tried to read that last line of type?”

  Rossi frowned. “Ah, I was facing the end of, what did you call it, the galley? Why, is that important?”

  Dunne shook his head impatiently. “Were you at the head of the column of type or at the galley’s open end? I mean, were all the letters upside down?”

  “Why, no. When I come to think of it, I was at the open end and the letters were the right way up. Backward, of course, but ...”

  “Patience, Captain. The last line you tried to make out—it wasn’t quite as unintelligible as the rest above?”

  The magistrate agreed.

  The patterer grabbed Rossi’s lapel excitedly. “Let’s go back to the scene of the crime and take another look at that typesetting.”

  THE NEW WORLD was deserted, apart from one constable nearby, guarding against looting. Not that this was an automatic protection, Dunne thought as he saw the man hastily hide a bottle at Rossi’s approach.

  The patterer had always taken a professional interest in the colony’s police. He knew that the mounted force, set up only a few years before to hunt down outlaws, was a success though accused of questionable tactics. But after more than ten years, the foot patrols labored under a welter of problems. They were under-strength, and pay and morale were low. Why, in the mid-’20s, in a force that should have hovered around eighty bodies at any one time, there had been twenty-five resignations and sixty or so sackings for drunkenness, dishonesty or other misconduct. And many constables were ex-convicts, causing suspicion or mistrust among all members of the populace.

  “Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” murmured Dunne.

  “But who is to guard the guards themselves—Juvenal?” replied Rossi, earning a raised eyebrow from the patterer. “That’s at least one piece of Latin that police chiefs know!” the magistrate said with a wink.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A compositor early acquires the art of reading type both in reverse and upside down. The line you have just read appears to the compositor like this:

  —John A. Spellman, Printing Works Like This (1964)

  IN THE COMPOSING ROOM, THE PATTERER PICKED UP THE GALLEY OF type and then carefully, so as not to spill the tiny characters, centered it on a perfectly level stone-topped table. Keeping the lines of type firmly together by blocking them with a heavy metal wedge, he lightly coated the typeface with an ink-sodden dabber made of horsehair and wool covered with sheepskin. He next covered the inked surface with a sheet of paper and,
with a clean padded roller, took an impression. He peeled off the proof to reveal a column, not one and a half inches deep, its lines in a very small typeface. On examination, this text proved to be an incomplete recitation of government orders, but the last line seemed to have no place in the report and the first line read, puzzlingly, “All eight point.”

  Dunne showed the proof to the magistrate. “It’s hard enough to read now,” he said. “The typeface is a very small one—it’s called Ruby—so small that you can print more than a dozen lines to the inch.”

  Rossi looked at the galley proof and shook his head. “But that’s damned odd. When I looked at the type I couldn’t decipher the beginning, but could make some sense of the last line. Now the tables are turned.”

  The patterer laughed. “No wonder. You looked from the wrong end of the galley. A compositor masters the art of reading type in reverse and upside down. That’s why we say, for ‘be careful,’ ‘mind your p′s and q′s′—it′s old compositors’ lore, because p and q are the hardest letters to distinguish in reverse, along with b and d. You read what you thought was ‘exobus SISSE′ because you guessed correctly at the backward e and s. But you confused d in reverse for b, a backward numeral 2 for S and a reversed 3 for E.”

  Rossi squinted at the proof. “But even printed, that last line doesn’t make sense. Now it reads: ‘32212 sudoxe!’ ”

  “It suggests that Will Abbot didn’t set that last line—and that whoever did wasn’t really a printer. Oh, he understood a smattering, but not the rudiments. He simply set what he wanted to say just as he’d write it—from left to right. So it prints in reverse order.”

  “So, it is meant to say ...”

  “Exactly—exodus 21223! Given that our amateur printer made several mistakes, it may be a reference to the biblical Book of Exodus, chapter and verse.”