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Authors: Robin Adair

BOOK: Death and the Running Patterer
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The final indignity was yet to come. Unbuckling the corpse’s belt the scourger tore down the wet breeches—like many men being whipped, the victim had lost control of his bladder—and with two strokes of the blade slashed off the exposed penis, then shoved the gory mess into the open mouth.
Carrying the tawse and the doused lamp, the killer slipped carefully through the gate, closed it quietly and melted away into the velvet night. There was no one to hear the last whispered, bitter message delivered to the mutilated man dangling on the triangles:
“Bon appétit!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
What bloody man is that?
—William Shakespeare,
Macbeth
(1606)
 
 
 
 
 
 
N
ICODEMUS DUNNE AND CAPTAIN ROSSI STOOD IN THE EARLY Monday-morning sunlight closely watching Dr. Thomas Owens examine the body on the floor of the Lumber Yard.
The hive of industry was quiet. The busy bees—an early coffle of convict workers arrived for the week’s first shift—were crowded, restless, in a far corner. They were excited by the break in their hard and monotonous routine but trying not to show it. They had been warned that any talk would be rewarded with fifty lashes. To start with. Later coffles were being turned back.
A convict overseer stood nervously beside the tableau of victim and investigators. He explained he had been the second arrival, at six A.M., and had discovered the mess. The body lay now in a tacky pool of congealing blood at the base of the flogging triangles. Ants scurried through the gore, carrying away lumps of torn flesh. Someone had clearly unhooked the still-shackled wrists from the iron supports only recently.
“What do we know?” asked Rossi, studying the discarded whip.
“Well,” said Owens, dusting his gloved hands, “we know he wasn’t one of ours.”
The police chief raised an eyebrow. “I mean,” the doctor continued, “that he is black but he is not an ‘Indian,’ not one of our sable brethren.”
“Of course he’s not,” snorted Rossi. “He’s either a West Indian or from Mauritius. I’ve seen plenty of both.” Dunne looked up; he had always meant to ask the lawman about his time in Mauritius.
The overseer cleared his throat. “Captain, he is—was—from the Indies, true, but a free man, one of our blacksmiths. Head one, in fact.”
“So he wasn’t a scourger?” the patterer asked. The thought of a revenge killing had soon presented itself.
“Lord, no. He only
made
the triangles. He really was a smith. A real craftsman, he was. A specialist, too. He usually only made shackles and chains for lags. It was like a gent going to his tailor. Here, I’ll show you what I mean. Hey!” he shouted at a guard. “Send one of those over here.”
When “one of those,” an ironed convict, clanked over, the overseer indicated the leg shackles. “I know you gents have seen them before, but have you looked close?”—Dunne did not tell him how closely he had looked in the past—“Works of art these are, all done by our dear departed.”
He pointed. The rings of iron plate, called basils, which went around the man’s ankles each comprised of two half-circles that, put together, fitted the size of the leg. The ends of the irons were flattened and had holes to take linking rivets. When the circlets were fitted to a convict, they were riveted together. This man’s irons were linked by about two feet of chain. A length of rope from the chain’s center link to the man’s belt stopped the chain dragging on the ground. Yes, Dunne remembered it all too well.
“Beautiful,” said the overseer, dismissing the prisoner. “He—that’s our smith—was in Mauritius before he came here. That’s where he learned his craft, shackling slaves. Proud of his work, he was. Said they fitted so snug there was no chafing and he never hurt no one.”
He paused. “Or maybe only the once,” he corrected himself. “He felt badly about one soldier here—too heavy the shackles was; fifteen bloody pounds, they say.” He dropped his voice conspiratorially. “But I reckon it wasn’t all his fault. He was only doing what Dumaresq wanted, only obeying orders.”
Dunne and the others of course knew the name Dumaresq. Several brothers of that name—their sister was Mrs. Darling—had followed the governor on his posting to Sydney three years earlier. The Dumaresq in question was doubtless the one who had been put in charge of the Lumber Yard.
“Was he by any chance a soldier?” asked Rossi.
“Of course he was a soldier, didn’t I just say so? Oh, you mean the smith? Yes, he had been, but that was years ago, before the century turned. He was always proud he’d been in the 45th in Grenada. Over the governor, he said.”
An oddity suddenly pricked Dunne. “How were you second arrival yet the one who found him? Who was first?”
The overseer shrugged. “Why, he was first, of course. Always was. He came always a few hours early at the beginning of the week because the forge would have been cold on account of Sunday. At other times the fire would have been banked overnight.”
“So,” said Rossi, “he was killed between, say, three A.M. and six A.M.?”
Dr. Owens nodded. That tallies with the body’s rigor and the fact that there’s as yet no putrefaction. And the lividity, from its levels in the lower limbs, suggests that he has been down from the triangles about—what is it now, nine A.M.?—only since about sunup.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed the overseer, “I unhooked him.”
“That raises the question: Who hooked him up?” said Rossi. “He must have been a strong devil to handle the strength of a smith.”
“Maybe our killer had an accomplice,” suggested the patterer.
“Indeed, sir,” interposed the overseer. “But there are tricks to every trade and flogging’s no exception. I’ve seen a man suspend himself—God’s own truth, sir!—so no manhandling of a reluctant or dead weight was called for. You persuade him, with the cat or the tickle of a blade, you see, to stand on a box or the like and throw his hand bindings or manacles over the top of the triangles. Kick his legs from under and he’s hanging like game.”
Rossi nodded. “However he was suspended, he was ironically—hah!—ironed around the wrists and ankles like the felons he catered for, no doubt by his very own handiwork. But, first, what exactly killed him?”
Owens blew through pursed lips. “We’ll know for certain when I have had him up on the table, but I’m pretty sure the whipping didn’t—by itself, that is. Men of his strength usually take it better than that. I’ve seen proud lads take 500 lashes and walk away. Of course, our man was old—well into his fifties, I’d guess. And his wounds were not the work of a professional scourger. Some of these are cat marks, and you can see where the tails have bitten deep. They’ve been dipped in wet sand to rough them up before each stroke.
“Now while that’s pretty professional, some wounds are just strap marks, although they often end in lacerations, as though something sharp was attached to the strap, a blade of some sort. I’d hazard that our flogger got tired with the cat and moved to something lighter. Which suggests someone untrained in the black art.”
“But what
did
kill him?” pursued Dunne. “Did he, er, choke on the …” He gestured at the amputated member the doctor had removed from the victim’s mouth.
Owens shook his head. “No, not that. That was done last. The leather gag would not have helped, for I see that his nose has been broken in the past and he would have had trouble breathing through it at the best of times. No, I suspect he had a seizure. See, his face is empurpled. And one other thing—two, really—the cat tails and the other slashes left their marks mainly on the left of his back and curl around onto the left side of the belly. And the deepest heel marks of the scourger belong to a right foot.”
“Which means?”
“That we are looking again at our old friend Bollocky Bill.”
And, as Owens beckoned to two hospital handlers to approach and remove the body on a litter, he added, “Oh, and of course there were slashes to the throat, midriff and ankles. Just like the first victim outside the tavern. And, as well as having his private parts placed where they shouldn’t be, the poor fellow was also given a ration of another old friend we’ve met before—but with a difference.”
He smiled at his companions’ frowns. “There is sugar again in the mouth, but very unusual sugar. It’s bright green.”
There was a long silence. “I think,” said Rossi at last, “that we need to hold a council of war.”
As the official party of investigators left the Lumber Yard, Dr. Owens to escort the body to the morgue for examination and his companions to return, if only briefly, to their normal lives, Nicodemus Dunne paused and took the captain aside.
“That strange remark by the overseer,” he said. “I meant to pursue it back there, but it slipped away in the excitement.”
Rossi looked blankly. “What remark was that, pray?”
“You must have heard it. He said that he—meaning the blacksmith—had served with the 45th Regiment in Grenada.”
“So?”
“But he added that the man had boasted of having served
over
the governor—and the familiar way it was said indicates the reference was to
our
governor. What could be the possible meaning?”
“Oh, that.” Rossi waved his hand dismissively. “I had a short word to the overseer about that. He must have misunderstood. I believe the smith never rose higher than corporal.”
The patterer persisted. “All this is supposed to have happened before the turn of the century. You know His Excellency well. When did he begin his career as an officer? Did he buy an elevated commission?”
Rossi looked affronted. “No, he did not. He stepped onto the lowest rung. He became an ensign in the 45th—in which his father was also a soldier—in May ’93. It was in Grenada or Barbados, I don’t recall. He’s come a long way since then, hasn’t he? And even if that smith did happen to serve in the regiment at the same time as the governor, I ask you, what would a rising young officer have to do with a lowly noncommissioned officer—especially a black one?” He looked keenly at Dunne. “My advice to you is to put the matter out of your mind. Forget about it.”
Captain Rossi started to walk away and the patterer shrugged and followed. But, and but … He still felt as though something had eluded him. Strangely, it was almost as if he had asked the wrong question.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
For now we see through a glass, darkly …
—I Corinthians 13:12
 
 
 
 
 
 
C
APTAIN ROSSI HAD ARRANGED FOR THE THREE MEN TO MEET that afternoon, when Dr. Thomas Owens could report on the results of his closer examination of the blacksmith’s corpse. They would rendezvous at the Hope and Anchor Tavern.
But which one? It could all be very confusing. Due to some ancient dispute now lost in the mists of time, and no doubt in an alcoholic haze, drinkers bestowed the name on two widely separated establishments. One was in Sussex Street and the other on the northwest corner of King and Pitt streets.
The Sussex Street rival perhaps had the best claim to the name; after all it was closer to the sea, as an anchor should be. Nevertheless, the Hope and Anchor in King Street had its devotees, who often tried to avoid confusion (but just as often created more mental mayhem) by referring to it by its previous name, the Bunch of Grapes, or even an earlier name, the Three Legs o’ Man.
Rossi and Dunne arrived at this tavern at the appointed hour and were served in the taproom by a powerfully built young man perhaps in his early twenties. He had a drooping moustache, which accentuated his generally sad demeanor.
“Gentlemen?” he queried in a well-modulated, cultured voice. Rossi ordered a brandy and the patterer a porter, just as Owens bustled through the door and joined them at the bar. The doctor surprised his companions with his order: “Adam’s ale, please.” He explained that he was drinking water because he had a lady patient to see and alcoholic breath might distress her.
Dunne was not convinced. “You, Doctor, water?” He laughed. “I recall you once warning me off the very stuff! You said it could carry disease, as miasmas and suchlike do. Why, you declared that the Tank Stream was not the only fouled water here, that most well water was unsuitable for drinking.”
Owens looked down his long nose. “If it has been boiled—and I am assured that it is served here thus—then it is quite safe. Anyway, there are worse things than dirty water.”
“Would you care to elaborate on that?” asked the patterer, intrigued by the doctor’s serious tone.
“No,” said Owens flatly. And the topic was dropped.
The doctor then confirmed that the smith had received injuries during flogging (obviously from a tyro thrasher) but had actually died of apoplexy. And yes, a number of the cuts came not from whip knots but somehow from a sharp blade, which had also been used to cut off the penis and inflict wounds mirroring those on the first victim.

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