The Dunbar Case(2)

I nodded. Was his accent now a shade closer to mine? Possibly.



‘I recommend the whitebait for starters and the swordfish for a main,’ Wakefield said. ‘Unless you’d care to study the menu.’



‘That’ll do me,’ I said.



His beer arrived and he held the waitress by the arm. ‘Wine?’



‘Sure.’



A bottle of that New Zealand riesling I like, please, Suzie.’



‘Yes, Professor.’



He gave our order to another waitress without touching her and drank half of his beer in a couple of manly gulps. ‘I gather you like to get straight down to business.’



‘That’s right, but you’re paying so you can call the shots.’



He drained his glass. ‘Have you ever heard of the wreck of the Dunbar?’



‘I don’t think so.’



‘A luxury passenger vessel. In August 1857 she was wrecked when trying to enter Sydney Harbour—’



‘I’m with you now. There’s a monument down the way in St Stephen’s cemetery.’



He didn’t like being interrupted. The wine arrived and he was too irritated to be polite to Suzie. He tasted it and nodded. ‘Good. Thanks. Yes, that’s right. Do you know the details?’



I shook my head. He was a prospective client and there was no point in annoying him further. Anyway, I didn’t know the details. I’d just had a passing look at the monument when wandering one day in the cemetery with my daughter Megan and grandson Ben. Megan lived a stone’s throw away.



‘The Dunbar was driven onto the rocks and she was holed and sank quickly. A storm was raging. As things stand, no one knows why the captain, who was very experienced in those waters, attempted the entry, given the conditions. One hundred and twenty-one people, passengers and crew, were drowned. There was, so the story goes, one survivor.’



The whitebait appeared and we dug in. Wakefield seemed to be torn between giving his full attention to the food and going on with his story. The food won and there was no way he’d talk with his mouth full. He poured the wine. The fish was crisp and delicious, so was the wine. We both used pieces of bread to wipe our plates.



He looked at me, his clear grey eyes keen and penetrating under trimmed white eyebrows. ‘You’ve registered something in what I’ve said.’



‘Yeah, you implied that there’s more to the story than—’



His turn to interrupt. ‘Yes, much more. Mind you, the story is dramatic enough as it is—tremendous loss of life, greatest maritime disaster ever, bodies washing up on the beaches for days, a navigational mystery and one survivor.’



He had my attention and I found I was able to remember something about the monument in the cemetery. It was a fenced-in white structure, something between a grave and a memorial stone. The writing had been partly obliterated by time and the weather. ‘Wasn’t there something about another ship?’



‘You’re thinking of the mass grave. Yes, the Catherine Adamson. That doesn’t matter.’



The entrée plates were whisked away to be replaced by the swordfish with baby carrots, snow peas and new potatoes. We both accepted ground pepper. It was eating time again and we started. The words ‘mass grave’ had triggered more memories—the remains of people drowned from two ships were interred but, according to Wakefield, only those from the Dunbar mattered. Single-minded and not long on compassion. Well, perhaps that’s the way you have to be to become a professor at a corporate university.



The restaurant was about two-thirds full, a good crowd for a Wednesday lunch and easy enough for the staff to handle. I sensed that Wakefield was keen to go on with his story but the food and wine deserved attention. A few pauses, however, were in order and during them he got on with it.



He said that a good many of the sixty-three passengers on the Dunbar were Sydney residents returning from a trip to England and there were Sydneysiders among the fifty-eight crew. This meant that family members were involved in identifying bodies or trying to find them. The city went into mourning, shops and banks closed and churches were full. Twenty thousand people watched the funeral procession.



‘A seaman with the uninteresting name of James Johnson was apparently thrown from the deck onto the rocks when the ship struck. He clung on there through the night and was spotted the next day and hauled up.’



‘Where was this, exactly?’



Wakefield dealt with a chunk of fish before answering. ‘Off South Head; the fool of a captain apparently thought he was approaching North Head and gave the wrong order.’