Death And The Running Patterer Part 13

He escorted her to a large evening party at the splendid Sydney Hotel, near the Military Barracks. Once inside, Rachel Dormin removed the fur-trimmed overgarment she had worn in the carriage.

"Why, in this climate, does a mantle need a fur trim?" asked the patterer.

"My dear," said his companion resignedly, "it's not a mantle, it's a pelisse. And the fur is-Well, ladies just like fur! Anyway, a lady can't be seen everywhere just in an evening dress."

"Oh?" replied Dunne. "Really? I rather garnered the impression that some modern dresses were meant to show everywhere everywhere. Only recently I was amused by a witty verse that was reprinted here from an English journal: "When dressed for the evening, girls nowadays Scarce an atom of dress on them leave; Nor blame them-for what is an evening dress But a dress that is suited for Eve?"

Miss Dormin laughed and slapped him lightly.

Her gown did reveal bare shoulders and decolletage. The bodice was cut off the shoulder and kept up surely by a little whalebone. By gravity, too, decided the patterer; the gravity of what would happen if the dress slipped. Wisely, he kept this amusing thought to himself. One risque joke was probably enough.

Short puffed sleeves left her arms bare, and her slippers, worn over silk stockings with colorfully embroidered clocks, peeped from beneath a skirt-length shorter than was fas.h.i.+onable by day. The fabric of her dress, she informed her escort, was gros de Naples gros de Naples, which meant nothing to him. But he understood and approved that her hair was piled high in an Apollo knot and anch.o.r.ed by a bejeweled ivory comb.

Nicodemus Dunne was no less a picture of sartorial splendor. He had once more consulted Mr. Cooper's tailor-although this time he had been able to pay for the hire-and now he wore a dark blue evening dress coat over a canary waistcoat and tight flesh-colored fine-wool pants strapped to his soft pumps. He carried a cloak and a tall hat.

First, they listened to the band of the 57th play popular airs. When the musicians rendered "General Ralph Darling's Australian Slow March" and an even better-known march by Mr. Handel, the patterer remarked that it was uncommonly civil of the 57th's bandmaster, Mr. Sippe, to perform those pieces. When Miss Dormin asked why, Dunne explained (showing off) that, of course, the governor's march had been composed by a rival, Mr. Kavanagh, of the Buffs, and that the Handel piece was the marching music of that other regiment.

Then the program of the rout rout changed and they danced: waltzes, galops, quadrilles. They sat out the unfamiliar changed and they danced: waltzes, galops, quadrilles. They sat out the unfamiliar varsoviana varsoviana, Spanish steps in circles or sets of two couples in triple time.

All evening, they deliberately avoided mention of the deaths that haunted them. But memories of them-especially those of Madame Greene and poor Elsie, so recent and so raw-were revived when a plump, perspiring woman whirled past, puffing.

"That could be Madame," observed the patterer, without thinking, steering his partner out of the way. "Sorry."

The announcement of an interval before supper broke the sad spell under which they had fallen.

While Rachel Dormin joined the ladies, a mysterious custom to Dunne, he joined the gentlemen who were retiring to the smoking room. He did not take tobacco, despite its approval by doctors, but he took great interest in its rituals, which were almost as solemn as decanting wine and letting it breathe, or swirling and sniffing brandy, or mulling wine.

This night, there seemed to be no pipes on display-of course, where could a man carry one in his skin-tight evening wear? Most smoked cigars; some (usually older men) took snuff. The patterer observed that these gentlemen carried the powdered tobacco already prepared-again, as in the case of pipes, there was no comfortable place to conceal a grater with which to grind the weed.

He also saw that, whereas on the street one would encounter men with utilitarian wooden snuffboxes, here, adorning officers and gentry, were small works of art, enameled silver or gold.

One thing was certain: No man here chewed. Or spat.

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IT WAS REGRETTABLE, then, that the one guest guilty that night of ungentlemanly behavior should be Nicodemus Dunne.

As the parties and couples regrouped to enter the supper room, he steered his partner toward a chambre particuliere chambre particuliere, a curtained-off banquette not meant for use that night. He stepped into one, gently pulled a surprised Rachel Dormin after him and drew the curtain closed.

"I've wanted to do this since I first saw you," he whispered, and pressed himself against her, holding her tightly. He leaned down into her shocked face and forced his lips onto her opened mouth.

She struggled and pulled her face away. "Mr. Dunne!" she gasped. "I beg you. Don't ... I have my reputation!"

Had she stiffened in his arms in acceptance or rejection? He could not be certain. Then, either by accident or by instinctive design, one of his hands slipped from her bare shoulder onto a breast. He then felt her grow completely rigid before she shoved him violently away. As he moved back she gave him a stinging slap across the face.

His eyes watered. "Miss Dormin, I'm so sorry."

"This is impossible." Her eyes were wide and fearful. She was white to the lips.

"Why is it ... so impossible?"

"Because ..." She was angry now. "Because I'm not one of those warm things who tumble indiscriminately ... who don't give a fig for their good name. Is there no such thing as courts.h.i.+p?"

Dunne looked stricken. "Can you forgive me? Can we forget this and start again?"

Rachel Dormin was suddenly composed once more and spoke calmly. "I always like you better as a gentleman. Let us not speak of this matter again. Please take me in to supper." She opened the curtain.

They supped then he escorted her home as if nothing had happened, and she told him that, yes, they could continue their friends.h.i.+p.

The patterer went to his bed that night a relieved man. He wanted Miss Dormin's acceptance.

But he still wanted a woman. Badly.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR.

Night makes no difference 'twixt the Priest and Clerk; Joan as my Lady is as good i'th' dark.

-Robert Herrick, "No Difference i'th' Dark" (1648)

"HERES TO YOU, MRS. ROBINSON." NICODEMUS DUNNE RAISED his gla.s.s of rum and saluted the tall, handsome woman behind the bar.

Norah Robinson smiled as she picked up an empty gla.s.s and returned the gesture. "And to you, Mr. Dunne." She spoke in the clear Irish brogue heard so often in the town and country. She was no prisoner or servant; the edge of steel that could enter her tone made it clear she was the boss.

The patterer was in an alehouse near Brickfield Hill. Its true name was the Baccha.n.a.l but it was known, of course, as the Bag o' Nails, save there was no ironmongery in sight. Or it was called the Bull and Dog because of the bull-baiting held, illegally, nearby.

It was early, not yet ten A.M., on the morning after his dismally failed attempt-if such it was-to seduce Miss Dormin. He rarely drank at such an hour, but now he was on his second dram.

He and Mrs. Robinson were the only people in the taproom. They knew each other as well as any good trader and regular customer do. Or it could be that there was something more. She was a good-looking woman of, Dunne judged, forty or so; perhaps she was still in her late thirties. He was a presentable male. And maybe they flirted sometimes, as men and women in propinquity invariably will.

"You're an early bird, aren't you," commented Mrs. Robinson. "What's the celebration then? Or perhaps it's a small wake?"

"I'm toasting my lack of brains," said the patterer with a shrug. "That and my luck in love-or, rather, the lack of it."

"Ah," was all she said.

"And where's your husband?" he asked after a pause.

"Oh, he's to Parramatta. He's supposed to be loading gin from a still-man there. And buying sheep. But ..." She leaned confidentially across the bar, in so doing tightening the fabric of her dress against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Why the secrecy, thought Dunne, there's no other b.u.g.g.e.r here. "But?" he prompted.

"But," she picked up her thread, "while I trust him not to sample too much of the gin, I suspect he's making sheep's eyes and tupping a ewe." She laughed.

"Tup," thought the patterer idly. Why, he had not heard the old English word for years. Only rustics and, it seemed, Celtic publicans, used it. Most people now chose other euphemisms for copulation. He remembered the s.h.i.+ver he had felt as a schoolboy (admittedly he had experienced a greater frisson surrept.i.tiously conning The Rape of Lucrece The Rape of Lucrece) when reading about the Blackamoor Oth.e.l.lo "tupping" white Desdemona.

He murmured aloud the lines in which another character tells Desdemona's father, "You'll have your daughter covered by a Barbary horse." He hoped there had been no tupping in Miss Dormin's recital at Levey's theater.

"Pardon?" said Mrs. Robinson, frowning.

His reverie was broken by her puzzlement. "Nothing. Sorry. I was just daydreaming." So, indeed, the Bard had the right of it: The world is is a stage and there's always pa.s.sion and l.u.s.t upon it. Well, I'll act out this play, he decided. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't quite follow what you said." a stage and there's always pa.s.sion and l.u.s.t upon it. Well, I'll act out this play, he decided. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I didn't quite follow what you said."

"Ah, Mr. Dunne! You're a slow rogue, toying with a poor simple woman."

"On my honor, no, ma'am!"

"Well, he has a fancy woman there and I'll wager they're chewing each other's tongues as we speak. If they're not hard at it swiving, that is. Though maybe not that, for I hear he has put her in the family way and there she is now, as big as the governor's stables ... But what's your worry?"

Here goes nothing, thought Dunne. "Unrequited love," he said.

Mrs. Robinson stared at him. Sure, he was a well set-up boy-man, rather. And she'd heard that he was kind and she knew he was clever. He stared back at her. In the half-light coming through the small windows, her white skin looked almost luminous and her hair made a golden-red nimbus around her oval face.

"Make that one your last," she said finally.

"I beg pardon if I've said something untoward!"

Mrs. Robinson smiled. "No, dear. Just make it your last. In fact, don't finish it. Shut that outside door and bar it. Wait five minutes and come upstairs. There's something you should see."

Dunne did as he was bid. On the level above he found a corridor. Only one door was open so he headed there. He crossed the threshold into a room dimmed by heavy, drawn curtains.

He heard a sound and turned. From behind the closing door stepped Norah Robinson, wearing only a s.h.i.+ft. Shutting off the corridor had lessened the light even more.

"All cats may be gray in the dark, but I'm no cat." She opened a curtain slightly and now there was enough light for Dunne to see her draw the s.h.i.+ft over her shoulders and drop it to the floor. She stood still for a moment, almost a ghostly figure in the gloom, but a phantom with very real, high b.r.e.a.s.t.s and long legs. Legs that ended in a triangle of dark pelt that looked, he always thought, like a map of Van Diemen's Land.

"Will you love me, Nicodemus?" she asked softly, seizing his hands. "Don't think ill of me. I'm no easy bunter. I haven't had a man for-G.o.d! What would it be? A year? More? If you're worried, my husband doesn't share my bed. Not even my room."

"Can't he-doesn't he-claim his rights?"

"Ach! It's my money, dear. He does what he's told. I never loved him and he never loved me. Once, maybe. Besides, I have a long knife handy here always. He knows I'd fillet him."

He licked his suddenly dry lips. "I have nothing with me, ma'am-no protection."

"I'm clean," she said coldly. "And for G.o.d's sake, stop calling me 'ma'am'!"

"I'm sure you are," said Dunne. "And I'm not poxed. But I always hope to use armor d'amour d'amour. And you must not risk becoming with child."

"You're the perfect gentleman, Nick ..." She drew him over to the bed and from a side table took a box. "If you're happier, here." She opened it. "Voila-lettres francaises, sheaths, an upright knight's armor, call them what you will. I sell a lot to hurried and worried men in the taproom. That's all I sell 'em, mind you!"

She helped the patterer shrug off his s.h.i.+rt and kick off his trousers and undergarment. She lay back as he rolled on a silk sheath and secured the ribbon ties. She held out her arms.

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DUNNE MUST HAVE dozed. He was woken by being shaken furiously. He looked up at the set face of Mrs. Robinson.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she hissed. "You talked in your sleep, just as you did when we loved. Who in the h.e.l.l is Rachel? Some s.l.u.t who won't give you what you want? Or did she give it to someone else?"

He had already peeled off the silken layer, but that didn't stop him. The b.i.t.c.h! He slapped Mrs. Robinson hard and rolled over and into her.

Even in the half-light he caught the sudden look of surprise on her face and in her widened eyes. "Where is your guardian? You have no armor, no protection!" She arched her hips desperately, trying to buck him off. But he held down her wrists and was too strong.

"d.a.m.n protection!" he said savagely through gritted teeth. "d.a.m.n Rachel!"

Mrs. Robinson melted. And, for the first time, he said her name: "Norah!"

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NICODEMUS DUNNE LEFT Norah Robinson sleeping and escaped quietly through the back door.

He returned to the Baccha.n.a.l later. The bar was filled and the hostess was busy.

"I'm sorry, Norah," he said when she had a quiet moment.

"Don't be, love," she said. "I'm not."

"You'll be all right?"

"'Course I will. I flushed you out ..."-Dunne looked around quickly-"And, anyway, I didn't get around to telling you, but I'm unfruitful-as barren as Pinchgut." She smiled sadly. "I don't suppose I can altogether blame my man for playing from home." She laughed. "Ah, well. Will you be having another? Drink, that is!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.

The unapparent connection is more powerful than the apparent one.

-Herac.l.i.tus (c. 500 BC; translator unknown)

NORAH ROBINSON COULD LAUGH, MUSED THE PATTERER, AS HE nursed the drink she had offered him. And no bad thing. Better that than to leave her crying. He drained his gla.s.s, waved because she was busy again and walked out into the sunny street. There was still plenty of life left in the day.

He knew he would go back to Norah, but he still wanted the untouchable Miss Dormin. He tried to dismiss three vastly different feelings tugging in his brain-selfish pride, remorse, self-pity.

He decided to blot out his personal tangles by devoting himself to the murders and soon found that he seemed to be making more progress in a matter of hours than he had in the previous few days. His earlier scattered thoughts were coming together and seemed finally to be making sense.