Death and the Running Patterer: A Curious Murder Mystery

by Robin Adair

  “It is interesting to see that there is an aside to the examination stating that Sudds had been a—and I use the exact words—‘remarkably well-conducted man previously, but Thompson’s character was not so good, and it is believed that it was owing to his evil advice that Sudds engaged in the scheme.’ But I digress.” He handed the document to the patterer. “Perhaps you would oblige me by reading it aloud?”

  Dunne knew that the captain was self-conscious about his accent, so he obliged and brought new life to Patrick Thompson’s words.

  “‘We were taken,’” he read, “‘to the parade ground, and the regimentals taken off us, and a General Order read to us by Brigade Major Gillman, by the order of His Excellency General Darling. After the Order was read to us, a set of irons was put on each of us. The irons consisted of a collar, which went round each of our necks, and chains were fastened to the collar on each side of the shoulder, and reached from thence to the basil, which was placed about three inches from each ankle . . . I could not stand upright with the irons on. The basil of the irons would not slip up my legs, and the chains were too short to allow me to stand upright. I was never measured for the irons; and Sudds’s collar was too small for his neck, and the basils for his legs, which were swollen, were too small.’”

  Dunne paused and shook his head in dismay before continuing. “‘There was a piece of iron that projected from the collar before and behind, about eight inches at each place. The projecting irons would not allow me to stretch myself at full length on my back. I could sleep by contracting my legs. I could not lie at full length on either side. After the yellow clothes and the irons were put on us, we were drummed out of the regiment, the Rogue’s March being played after us by two or three drummers and fifers. We were not drummed out in the usual way, which is to put a rope about the neck, cut off the facings, and place a piece of paper on the back, with a description of the offense that the party may have committed. Instead of this we had the irons and the yellow clothing ...′”

  “What about Sudds?” interrupted Owens impatiently.

  “Soon, Doctor, soon. He is coming to that now.” The patterer continued his grim recital. “‘The night of the day of punishment, Sudds was so ill that we were obliged to get a candle from the under-jailer in order to keep up a light during the night. I gave him some tea, which I had purchased. A fellow prisoner said he did not think he would live long. I then asked Sudds if he had any friends to whom he would wish to write. He said he had a wife and child in Gloucestershire, and begged that if he did not get better by the next night, I would read some pious book to him, adding, “that they had put him in them irons until they had killed him.”‘

  “That they did,” said the patterer quietly, handing the statement back to Rossi, who grimaced.

  The group sat in silence until Dunne roused himself and commented, “It was all over in days. Sudds was taken to the jail hospital, such as it is, then to the general wards. He died less than a week after being so cruelly restrained.”

  Dunne paused to scan the other papers in the file. “There is no doubt that Governor Darling directed Captain Dumaresq to have particular irons fashioned at the Lumber Yard. It also seems that Dumaresq took the finished shackles to His Excellency for inspection. It’s fair to assume the governor approved what he saw, and no one argues that these weren’t the ones subsequently used.”

  Rossi sighed. “He wanted to make an example that would most discourage other soldiers from imitating the scheme.”

  “He certainly achieved that,” said Owens coldly. “I see that Mr. Hall in The Monitor says the irons were such as had never before been heard of in this colony, even for the most atrocious murderers.”

  The patterer agreed. “They were carrying an extra fourteen or fifteen pounds, three times more than shackles on men in the usual road gangs. But let these sad events now inform our intellects, not our passions. It seems that Mr. Harris has steered us on a promising course. Apart from the case of the man known as The Ox, our victims’ neck, belly and leg slashes may be seen to mimic the fall of the cruel shackles on Sudds and Thompson. The dead printer’s decapitation could be seen as a reference to a spiked collar.”

  “Tell me,” interrupted Owens suddenly. “Why was Sudds so ill suddenly, unlike Thompson? Ill, indeed, unto death. What does your report say?”

  “Well,” replied Rossi. “Fellow soldiers told that for quite a while his eyesight had been failing, also his hearing, and said that he had found it painful to walk. Some, including the governor, stated he had dropsy.” He consulted a document. “The medical officer at the jail declared that dissection showed no apparent disease to account for death. He said Sudds had ‘wished himself to death.’”

  The patterer had a sudden memory of his meeting with Dr. Peter Cunningham—was it really only a few days ago, at the beginning of this adventure?—and how that doctor had alluded to the prisoners’ conviction that they could will themselves to escape, to reverse their destiny. Could Sudds indeed have “wished” himself to some sort of earlier freedom? Even if the price of his return passage was death?

  He jerked his mind back to the present and saw that Owens was shaking his head as he said, “Dropsy? Perhaps. It sounds, however, as if he may have suffered from a diabetes.”

  “Interesting,” said the patterer. “But does it take us anywhere?”

  Owens prompted, “Diabetes; which is known as . . . ?”

  A pause. Then the patterer ventured, “Well, I’ve heard it commonly called the sweet-water sickness.”

  “Why that?”

  “Why? Well, because the sufferer’s water—his urine—smells sweet.”

  “Quite so,” agreed the doctor. “It does. So you have a condition that may be described as diabetes mellitus. The first word comes from the Greek diabainein, meaning ‘to pass through,’ and mellitus is, of course, Latin—‘sweetened with honey.’ Now,” he continued. “What is another common name for a diabetes?”

  “Well, it’s also called sugar diab—My God! Sugar!”

  “Exactly,” said Owens with a smile, which faded slightly as he added, “But why the blacksmith’s mouthful was dyed green, and the others’ not so, I confess to be a puzzle.”

  “No matter,” said Rossi enthusiastically. “It seems someone is avenging the death of Sudds by imitating the pair’s bodily confinements and by referring to his true illness. Now we have to find out who it is.”

  “But,” said Alexander Harris, “where do all our victims fit into the scheme of things?”

  “Perhaps this will help our cause,” answered Rossi, suddenly standing up and waving wildly. He had seen a redcoat appear at the tavern door. The man advanced and handed over an envelope, after which the captain dismissed him.

  Rossi tore open the seal and scanned the papers inside. “I asked Colonel Shadforth to have a search made of the victims’ recent history in the regimental records. At about the time of the drumming-out seemed a logical starting point. I understand their discharges, honorable ones, were granted soon after that event.”

  As he began to read, he tut-tutted. “The colonel has gone back even further. This first note refers even to the time of the theft that began this sorry saga. So, what does it say? . . . Yes, in the middle of September—that’s about a week before the theft?—The Ox, as we call him, the printer Will Abbot and the soldier knifed in the alley were detailed to guard duty. Well, that’s quite normal. Sudds, too, I see. No Thompson.”

  He turned a page. “What’s this? Perhaps the colonel thought it of interest. It seems that on the following day, three of the guard were paraded for breaches of dress regulations and general good order—uniform irregularities—and for losing equipment. They escaped with reprimands.”

  “Which three?” asked Owens.

  “The Ox, Abbot . . . and Sudds.” Rossi studied the group.

  Only Harris, the secret ex-soldier, offered an opinion. “Happens all the time with soldiers,” he said. “Although they’re generally smart enough befo
re and after a spell of guard. Still ...”

  Rossi added, “Sudds—and we’ve heard what a good soldier he seemed—was rebuked for losing army property, to wit a cane. A cane?” He was puzzled.

  “Ah,” said Harris. “It could make sense. He was turned out well when inspected at the start of the guard duty and so he took the stick.” He was met with blank stares. “Oh, the smartest soldier inspected for the guard may be excused turns at serious sentry-go and is made orderly of the guard, a light duty. Light, because it means he can carry a swagger-stick instead of a musket. They call it ‘taking the stick.’”

  “Well, it’s not quite the information I wanted,” said Rossi. He found a new page. “But perhaps this is. The adjutant has made these notes after interviews with men who recall that Rogue’s March. And listen to this!” In his excitement, he had forgotten his shyness about his accent. “The prisoners’ regimentals were taken off—remember, that is a prime humiliation—by a private soldier. The name listed here is that of none other than the man who was to become our first victim, outside the alehouse! Next, one of the men who played the march and drummed Sudds out of the regiment was ...”—he paused for effect—“. . . our late lamented printer, Will Abbot!” He looked exceedingly pleased with himself.

  The patterer was reluctant to temper the captain’s delight but felt he must. “What about the poisoned man, The Ox?”

  Rossi grimaced. “He was in the regiment at the time, and he may have observed the ritual, but there appears to be no evidence that he took an active role. Yet I insist he is linked by the killer’s handwriting.”

  “Agreed,” said Dunne. “However, there’s a weakness in our theory. Or a terrible threat lurking. Our four victims so far are but a handful of the possible targets for an avenger. Granted, the blacksmith could be held as particularly culpable, but why not other drummers and fifers? Why not the unsuccessful jail doctor? And there are more important figures who could be—and are being—held responsible for Sudds’s death . . . Captain Dumaresq, who oversaw the manufacture of the accursed devices, and the Brigade Major, who took the parade for the Rogue’s March. Perhaps most important of course, there is His Excellency, who started it all by thwarting Sudds’s plans then ordering the draconian punishment. They’re all still alive.

  “And where, and why, has the killer been leading us with the mysterious verse and the printed clue? The Hebraic doggerel? Well, I agree we have an angel of death and there has been a fire, a slaughterer and an ox—but nothing else mentioned applies even remotely. So far, anyway. The line of printed warning—if such it is—taken from Exodus? Again there are ‘wound’ and ‘burning,’ and ‘stripe’ could stand for flogging. But no eye, teeth, hand or foot.”

  Nicodemus Dunne shrugged. “No, gentlemen, I concede that Sudds almost certainly has something to do with it, but there’s another dimension that we have not yet entertained.”

  “Well,” said Rossi briskly. “Perhaps tomorrow will bring us a change of fortune.”

  The meeting adjourned.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry

  Of some strong swimmer in his agony.

  —Lord Byron, Don Juan (1819-24)

  THE NEXT DAY, THE PATTERER MET THE FLYING PIEMAN GOING TO the seaside. Depressed by his lack of inspiration in the murder investigations, he thought it was more a case, as in the nursery rhyme, of Simple Simon meeting a pieman. He tried to shrug off his sense of failure with a welcoming smile.

  Both men were obviously at leisure: William Francis King, though in full fig, was not towing his gaily painted pie-cart and Nicodemus Dunne was not carrying his satchel stuffed with newspapers.

  Dunne was in the habit of swimming, or at least splashing about and sunning himself, at Soldiers Point, which nosed out into Cockle Bay two blocks west of the army barracks. Sorry, he thought, not Cockle Bay; now it was all to be called Darling Harbor. The name Cockle would satisfy him, though—a cold fish in a hard shell was a perfectly apt description of the taciturn, aloof governor.

  Seabathing was the best way to keep clean in Sydney. Lack of water and difficulty heating it made tubbing a distinct luxury. And, of course, many people—even doctors—believed that too much washing was unhealthy. Better that risk than stinking, Dunne had decided long ago. And many women (not Miss Dormin, he was certain) reeked almost as badly as the men.

  Today he had gone to Soldiers Point, but soon left. There were, well, too many soldiers rowdily enjoying the clear waters. He had moved north to a quieter strand beside another headland that had similarly exercised the naming rivalries of the citizens. Some called it Cockle Bay Point. Others, and the patterer was among them, preferred the more colorful, even romantic Jack-the-Miller’s Point. The name honored the pioneer miller on the point, John Leighton. Now there were other windmills; Miller could have owned the whole point, but he had refused to fence the area, the main condition of his land grant, and so lost it to others.

  It was after Dunne had walked along Kent Street, passed the stone quarry and headed on toward the limekilns (dross from which threatened to pollute the bay) to reach the sandy stretch that he had come across William King, who was decked out in his best formal Pieman uniform. Quaintly dressed in a fashion that had expired years before, he wore red knee breeches meeting skin-tight white hose. Over these he wore a pale blue jacket, and his head was topped by a tall hat that seemed to almost have a life of its own, due to cascading, trailing streamers of many colors. Sometimes he wore a simple jockey’s cap rather than this extravaganza, but he always carried a long, stout staff that was decorated like the topper.

  When he reached the beach, the patterer stripped to his underdrawers and slipped into the chilly water. It was always calm for swimming here, but he knew of people back home (there, he thought, I’ve said it) in Devon and Cornwall who deliberately battled out through the heavy seas that thrashed the shingle beaches, then rode the waves ashore using only buoyancy and body movements. Some, he believed, even skimmed to the shore on slabs of driftwood. He didn’t know if anyone here had tried it on the beaches to the east, such as the one called Boondi, which was native for “sound of the surf.” He was certainly not sure enough of his swimming ability even to consider testing the theory.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” he called to his companion, who stood stock-still and fully dressed well away from the water’s edge.

  King shook his head so hard that the ends of his moustache flapped and the ribbons on his hat rattled. “I have taken a vow never to meet the sea waters. I hate the sea. Anyway, I can’t swim.”

  Dunne was intrigued. With his athletic prowess and great strength, the pieman should have been as at home in the sea as a seal.

  The patterer bobbed closer to shore, but when he was only several body-lengths from the sand, still in water that was well over his head, the cramps struck. This cannot be happening, he thought . . . I have not come into the water on a full stomach; all I had was a pie hours ago and then a lozenge pressed upon me in the street by Dr. Owens . . .

  In his panic, he thought he must be suffering a heart seizure or apoplexy. Whatever it was, he lost control of his limbs and his ability to remain buoyant, and began to sink, barely able to thresh the surface. And he was powerless even to stop the slight current dragging him into deeper water.

  As he bobbed up briefly he saw the figure of the pieman, agitated and waving his arms, on the shore. He could not stop gulping more water as he sank again. Then suddenly something hard struck his head. Desperately trying to fight to the surface, he saw a large stick with something streaming from it—seaweed? Was this to be his funeral wreath?—and grabbed the wood with one hand.

  The stick moved and he managed to go with it. His feet, knees, some body part, touched blessed bottom, then he felt strong hands drag him ashore. A scarlet haze enveloped him.

  The patterer vomited copiously, and gradually the cramps and the red dizziness eased. He saw beside him the pieman, grinning with relief—and soake
d from moustache to toe. The beribboned staff that had been used to reach him was another soggy reminder of the adventure.

  “That was courageous of you,” said the patterer. “You could have drowned, too.”

  William King shrugged. “I only waded in as far as possible. My staff did the rest. I couldn’t leave you to drown. I just couldn’t do that. Not again.”

  Dunne frowned. “Again? I don’t understand.”

  The pieman sighed deeply. “Some know the story. You might as well know it, too. Soon after I arrived in the colony, I fell in love with a convict lass. She was assigned and wasn’t free to marry, so we hatched a plan. I paid ten pounds for cabin passage—for one, mind you—on a bark set for Van Diemen’s Land. I sent aboard my luggage, one big box. You have probably already guessed that my girl was hidden inside, as comfortable as possible. And I had bored airholes in the sides. The idea was that I would release her when we were far out to sea. I came ashore to attend to some business, but when I returned the ship was gone!

  “I took a horse and rode, a crazed man, along the winding road to the South Head. I could see the bark heading out to sea. There was no way I could attract its attention. I harbored hopes that someone would hear my love and release her. There was no way I could overtake her. Then later I heard the ship had been lost. Do you wonder that I hate the sea? I drowned her, alone.”

  Jesus! thought the patterer. What must it have been like for that poor girl, carried to the depths in her box, a ready-made coffin? He remembered the fear in a storm of every convict battened below in chains. You knew you would never escape. He shivered, not just from his damp near-nudity, but at the memory.

  The pieman was weeping.

  “Come come,” said the patterer awkwardly, clapping his friend’s back. “Let’s get out of our wet things and walk a bit to dry off.”

  Wearing only their drawers and shoes, the pair roamed casually toward Lieutenant Dawes’s Battery. King’s wet clothes were draped on his staff and they carried this laundry between them.