Death and the Running Patterer: A Curious Murder Mystery

by Robin Adair

  “Could, perhaps, our slayer have needed to cover the murder he really desired with a deadly smokescreen? Something I learned about the New World printer suggested that he could have been a threat to most of you here today, a menace that had to be removed. You see, I found that he was a blackmailer, an extortioner.

  “At first I had suspicions that there may have been something of value to him in the past of our Captain Rossi, but everyone seems to know his colorful history. Although I must admit I was, and still am, puzzled as to why he professes not to know the nom de guerre of his old regiment, the Duke of Wellington’s ‘Fighting Fifth.’”

  Rossi interposed. “That’s easy, my boy. I served with the 5th only to ’03—long before Old Nosey took a fancy to them and bestowed the name.”

  “The point, Dunne, get to it!” snapped Darling.

  The patterer smiled and bowed slightly. “Dr. Halloran.”

  The black-suited editor gave a start.

  “After the murder of Will Abbot, you professed charity among brothers by claiming to have helped him set up shop. But why would you have supported him? Hadn’t you dismissed him for extortion? And, in truth, you had a reason to want to be rid of him more permanently: He was yet more unwelcome business competition. The Gleaner is failing, isn’t it? You are selling only about 200 copies to your rivals’ 600 or more each. Isn’t that true? Didn’t you desperately want to ‘kill off’ the opposition? And perhaps Abbot made threats to air in public a scandal about your son. Yes, indeed. The man would be a bad enemy to have—alive!”

  DUNNE PAUSED TO let his words sink in before continuing. “Then there is you, Mr. Wentworth. A talking parrot led me to suspect you of the same murder.”

  The lawyer gasped, started to his feet, then fell back into a strangled silence as the charge rolled on.

  “During the investigation, I happened across this winged ‘witness’ in the home of Frances Cox, where I happen to lodge. Your lady was there with your daughter, Timmie. In passing, Mrs. Cox remarked that the child would be three ‘come Christmas.’

  “When I wondered later what Abbot could possibly have known to your disadvantage—and, pray, don’t explode; I have applied my jaundiced eye to everyone I thought possible—I idly pursued the matter of the child, and something did not seem to add up. Church records show that Thomasine—Timmie—was baptized at St. James on January 15, 1826, as the child of ‘Sarah Cox and W. C. Wentworth.’ Other documents show Timmie was born on December 18, 1825—hence the Christmas birthday.

  “Now, I won’t duel with you—I think we’ve had enough of that—for making the following observations. You appeared for Miss Cox in her breach-of-promise action in May 1825. Your plaint was that she was a respectable girl whose ‘reputation had been injured,’ a girl who ‘kept good company and was never out late at night.’ The court supported her case. My ten—no, nine—fingers point to a certain discrepancy of two months.”

  By this time, Wentworth was choking with rage.

  “Now,” continued the patterer calmly, “personal affairs are nothing to do with anyone here. But what would the lords of our legal system make of a plaintiff who appeared to perjure herself?—and of a lawyer who, it seems, had already impregnated this paragon of virtue? Perhaps nothing. But again, perhaps, a blackmailer might find it fertile ground.”

  Mr. Wentworth, though still angry, was pale and silent.

  “YOUR EXCELLENCY COMES to my attention, too,” said the patterer next.

  Darling raised a hand in sudden anger, then let it drop and sat back, stone-faced.

  Unruffled, the patterer continued. “You, sir, are all-powerful here and could have had any of the victims disposed of without necessarily lifting a finger. Although, as we have seen, your finger is not above personally pulling a trigger. But that tavern private, or the slaughterman, would have had no power to harm you. And what could a whoremistress and her maid have done to deserve death? The Lumber Yard murder . . . Well, the smith had been in the 45th.”

  Darling looked more animated.

  “But I’ll deal with that in a moment. The New World printer is, again, another story. He was, I repeat, an extortioner. That fact raised the specter of a threat from your past before your rise to vice-regal eminence. But, how are you, the highest in the land, vulnerable?

  “Well, in your battle with the Emancipist political forces, especially Mr. Wentworth and Mr. Hall, you must maintain the high ground that being plenipotentiary bestows upon you. What if there were something in your past that would diminish you in the eyes of the Exclusives and thus decrease your power? Something that here and now both snobs and levelers could hold against you and make political capital from? Facts that could alter the delicate social climate here? The shocks could ripple all the way to the Palace. And you do cherish that knighthood. If a blackmailer had learned this secret—how could he be dealt with? Paying off is rarely the answer. It never ends. Shall I go on?”

  Ralph Darling shrugged grimly. “If you must.”

  “Then, to put it bluntly,” said Dunne, “you, sir, have not always been an officer and a gentleman.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  I now feel that I have reached a point of this narrative at which every reader will be startled into positive disbelief.

  —Edgar Allan Poe, “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” (1845)

  THERE WERE GASPS, THEN DEADLY SILENCE, BROKEN ONLY WHEN the patterer continued. He studiously avoided Captain Rossi’s bland, innocent gaze.

  “The Army Lists would show that Ralph Darling first became a junior officer in the 45th Regiment in May 1793. What is not widely known is that some years earlier he had joined its ranks as a private soldier in keeping with family tradition.” He looked at Darling. “You joined your father’s regiment in Grenada, as did your brother, Henry. You were listed on the unit’s muster as privates from June 25, ’86, to June 24, ’88. You became—forever to some—Wellington’s ‘scum of the earth.’”

  The governor interrupted. “So you found someone else from the 45th, apart from that gossip in the Lumber Yard?”

  Dunne ignored him. “Often officers’ ranks are bought and sold like cattle. Agents such as Cox and Greenwood in London trade in them. What’s a captaincy worth in a middling regiment—1,100 pounds and the sale or the equivalent of the buyer’s lieutenancy?” He looked to Colonel Shadforth, who nodded. “And a majority costs, what? The sale of a captaincy, plus 1,400 pounds or so?”

  Another nod.

  “You, Excellency, had no money. But,” continued the patterer, “by ’93, the extent of war with the crapauds was taking its toll on officer numbers. The army found it needed thousands of new leaders, and many came from the ranks, as never before. By the height of the Peninsular wars, about one in twenty officers was not originally of the officer caste. But peace has since revived the cattle market. The blacksmith remembered your humble beginnings. Did Abbot know, too? And was this secret enough to kill for? And kill again and again, as cover?”

  Darling started to speak but Dunne allowed him no explanation, no defense and no denial. He moved on relentlessly.

  “And now,” he said, “Dr. Owens.”

  The surgeon straightened his shoulders, as if expecting a blow, and nodded slowly.

  “Yes, Doctor. What can I say about you?”

  ACTUALLY, THE PATTERER could say quite a lot, but he didn’t intend to share it all with this assembly. He certainly would not reveal that he had already discussed his suspicions about the doctor with the man himself.

  There had been just the two of them. They had met at the hospital earlier that morning and Dunne had begun bluntly.

  “You, Doctor, seem to have had a compelling reason to kill Madame Greene. No, don’t say anything until I’ve finished. I wondered about you from the first time we met, and subsequently . . . well, I’ll explain as I go along. It quickly emerged that you seemed almost by choice to spend as much time with the dead as with the living. I also noted that you always wear gloves, even in
this heat, when you deal with a live patient or make even the most informal social contact. I especially call to mind that you wore gloves with Madame Greene when she was alive, and I saw you without gloves when she was dead. Now, I ask you, what modern doctor would normally choose not to use his bare hands on a patient always, better to feel the problem and gauge the humors?

  “Now, I did observe your hands at our first meeting. They were scarred and covered with a nasty rash. I decided idly at the time that you suffered from what I gather are called ‘doctor’s’ or ‘nurse’s hands,’ with common infections from routine contact with septic patients.”

  Dunne waved away an interjection from Owens. “But progressively I noticed other oddities, although at the time I confess I didn’t recognize their import. I also considered the matter of your teeth: distorted and, if I may say so, rather horselike; you bare orange-yellow fangs. You constantly eat scented lozenges, I imagined to disguise bad breath. I was on the right track there, wasn’t I?

  “I might have put aside all these things, except that, quite unrelatedly, a friend warned me to take care at this hospital. When I asked idly if that involved you, for what could be described as reasons of professional ethics this person gave me a cryptic answer, although not a no. He told me only to consider seriously the import of a word, cinnabar. I duly discovered that cinnabar is the most important ore of mercury, or quicksilver. And that the art of the physician offers mercurial treatments, preparations of the metal.

  “But these have some nasty side effects: eczema, rash—called, I believe, Lepra mercurialis—discolored teeth, degeneration of the gums and walls of the cheek, exceedingly bad breath and excessive salivation. These can be controlled by . . . chewing lozenges, naturally. Mercury treatments are meant to kill infectious organisms, but overdosage can be dangerous, leaving life-threatening, concentrated deposits in animal tissue. That means human tissue. This mercury can, I believe, be administered by pills or injections—sometimes into the penis. Or it can be inhaled in the fumes of heated cinnabar.”

  “You’ve not mentioned the underdraws,” said Owens.

  When the patterer looked puzzled, the doctor explained: “Some patients were prescribed the wearing of undergarments impregnated with the mercury.”

  “That’s very interesting,” said Dunne. “If I had known that fact, it may have pointed me earlier to the method used in one of our murders. It stared you in the face, too.”

  It was the doctor’s turn to be perplexed.

  “But,” continued the patterer, “none of the by-blows I have mentioned is as horrible as the disease mercury is meant to fight—the plague that Columbus brought back from the Pandora’s Box he opened in the New World.”

  “Bravo!” said Owens bitterly. “Your clinical descriptions are broadly accurate if somewhat melodramatic. Yes, we are talking about syphilis. The Great Pox! The disease is commonly transmitted by sexual congress, either connubial or less formalized. It starts with chancres and fever and moves to rashes of the skin and mucous membranes, ulcers, nervous degeneration and collapse. It can lie dormant, but it will invariably kill, once it has rotted the bones, face and genitals.”

  “Did you blame Madame Greene for this fatal affliction?” asked the patterer. “Or did you, perhaps, regard her as responsible for a diseased girl in her employ—or for any other poxed harlot?”

  “You know that the disease may be hereditary?” said Owens.

  Dunne nodded. “Yes, I do. And there’s one other thing that has been testing my theory. If the disease is passed on sexually, why would you so particularly avoid all, even simple, physical contact? Is not abstinence enough?”

  Dr. Owens nodded approvingly. “Well done.” He paused. “Have you heard of yaws?”

  The patterer knew what Owens was referring to—yaws was a dreaded tropical disease. Discharge from skin sores, not sexual activity, caused it, but it was a scourge almost a twin to syphilis.

  “I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t yaws,” said the doctor. “The symptoms and course of both diseases can be confusingly similar. I took mercury to be on the safe”—he paused and laughed wryly at the word that had slipped out—“side.”

  Dunne hesitated. “Which is it?”

  “Take your pick,” replied Owens. “Either way, I’m as good as dead.” After an awkward pause, he asked, “What do you intend to do with this information—and with your suspicions?”

  “With you as a doctor? Nothing. Healing is hard to come by here. Even with such infections, men like you are invaluable if they are careful. And I’m sure you are when you deal with living subjects. God knows, I recall you wouldn’t drink with us that day of our council of war because you were later making a consultation. Now, about you as a murder suspect. We’ll have to see at the meeting later today.”

  Dunne justified to himself his special treatment of the doctor. He did not want to punish Owens for his illness, and he liked and admired the man. He thought he was a good person—more than could be said about most of the others he had summoned to the barracks.

  But he could not show his hand yet, not to anyone.

  IT WAS NOW forty-five minutes after noon and the quiet room was filled with mistrust and tension.

  The patterer decided what he would say about Dr. Thomas Owens. “You would seem to be the most likely person, by virtue of training and opportunity, to have killed Madame Greene. Think of it. It certainly wasn’t a quick process. Her poisoning occurred over a long period of time—you said so yourself. And you certainly had the necessary access to her. A male figure who called himself a doctor purchased the arsenic we know killed the slaughterman. And we have the evidence from Elsie that your treatment—even your lozenges—broke Madame’s usually rigid dietary regime. Admittedly, you were always open and helpful about the medical side to these murders, but were you simply controlling the flow of information to your advantage?”

  William Charles Wentworth’s confidence had returned and he interrupted again. He shook his shaggy head and snorted derisively. “Is that all you have on him—and on the others you’ve traduced? Well, sir, it seems you have now besmirched us all with nothing more substantial than your suspicion and with innuendo—and gone nowhere. I note that you have not yet vilified Hall or Shadforth. Is not one of them, in your eyes, guilty?”

  Dunne shook his head. “I know nothing to Mr. Hall’s discredit. I really asked him here only as an independent witness, a fair broker.” To keep the bastards honest, he thought privately. “And Colonel Shadforth is more likely to have been a victim than a killer.” He ignored the stir and continued. “I jest, but perhaps some irate whaling captain may wish to get rid of him, to stop his efforts to have coal gas replace oil for lighting our streets, as in London of late. Seriously, though, everyone I have called here today will soon walk out free. All except one.”

  But Wentworth would not let go of the bone. “Rubbish! For all your fine talk, apart from some sullied reputations—and it will be all over town by nightfall—the fact is you—and we—are no closer to the truth.”

  “First,” replied the patterer, “none of this need go any farther than these four walls. Each of you should keep any secrets you have learned. That’s the action of honorable men, which I’m sure you all are. Or, if you like, it’s insurance against your own exposure.” Almost as an afterthought, he added casually, “Secondly, as to the murders, of course the mysteries have been laid bare and the killer unmasked.”

  The governor sat up. “Well, for God’s sake, let us into the secret!” he snapped.

  “I need only this piece of evidence,” replied Dunne calmly and raised a hand for silence. And patience. He keenly watched the clock on the mantelpiece as the others in the group fidgeted uncomfortably. Three dragging minutes ticked away until the hands marked the hour.

  Almost as the clock struck, there was a sharp rap on the door. “Come!” ordered the patterer. The door opened inward, obscuring from all but Dunne any view of the person on the threshold. He gazed pleasantly at the v
isitor and said, quite conversationally, “Ah, yes. Please, do come right in and join us. And tell us why you did it.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Take but degree away, untune that string,

  And, hark, what discord follows! each thing meets

  In mere oppugnancy . . .

  —William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (1602)

  OUT OF PURE HABIT, THE MEN ROSE AS RACHEL DORMIN CAME into the room.

  She was as Nicodemus Dunne remembered her best, in the same walking-out ensemble she had worn on their first day together, their first good day, the day of the church and the wayzgoose and the cricket match.

  Her face was flushed but she was outwardly composed. She carried only the reticule that Dunne also remembered from their earliest meeting.

  “Here I am, as you requested,” she said in a level voice, dropping a curtsey to the governor.

  He, like the others (save the patterer), looked dazed at the dramatic development.

  “I’m sorry I kept you waiting until the hour,” said Dunne. He was just as even in his speech. “But it was necessary.”

  Miss Dormin looked around the room coldly. “So I see.” She took the seat proffered. “What makes you think that I, as you say, did it?”

  “Oh, it all came together. Very slowly, admittedly. I suppose I first realized, early on, that you were left-handed, like our killer. But I dismissed it. Many people are—at least until a schoolmaster or parent has thrashed the sinister habit out of them. Or tied the offending left hand behind their back until they learn to use the proper right hand. Enough of that, though. More important—and not necessarily in this order—I gradually examined all the things I knew about you. They eventually added up to the rather startling conclusion that there really is no such person as Miss Rachel Dormin.”