Terry Dowling - The Bone Ship.txt

THE BONE SHIP ,  By: Dowling, Terry

The awful truth of his situation dawns on Paul Rodan much too late when his search for an antique model ship leads him to Australia, in this tale from a new collection of horror stories.

When Mrs Davinon brought in the tea and the plate of dark coconut-frosted cakes, Paul Rodan lost his concentration all over again. He had hoped he could manage the old traveller's trick: half-closing his eyes and imagining where else he could be. In England, certainly, that went without saying, inside like this where it was cool enough. Somewhere in the United States, San Francisco in the summer, yes. In Africa perhaps, Johannesburg or Tangiers, even parts of Asia, but in the highlands there, out of the terrible humidity.

It was a favourite game, and it had only just started to work when Mrs Davinon arrived with the tea and the cakes and ruined what was possibly his final chance for now. The ceilings of her house were high enough, this spacious parlour large enough, cool enough, tastefully furnished enough, and the ceiling fan gave it the right cosmopolitan touch (India was there then; India, or it might have been Singapore, Shanghai or Hong Kong), but the woman's alarming accent and the plate of wretched coconut and chocolate sponge cakes brought him back to the parlour of a two-storey Victorian (one-time) mansion in Parkes, in central-western New South Wales, in Australia of all places. In Australia!

The Gautier-Davinon search had led to Australia. Who would have thought?

"How do you take your tea, Mr Roddin -- is it Roddin?" the woman asked, looking to Paul like failed gentry in some period film -- wearing a neat, once-stylish grey dress, flat shoes, closely coiffed hair still brown enough amid the grey, a good face with sharp dark eyes. She had to be in her 60s, either that or life in this godforsaken town had been especially cruel. A doctor's wife, going by the dull bronze plaque beside the front door: Dr C. Davinon, and widowed by all counts, judging by no mention of a husband in their phone call, and no sign of one since he'd arrived. Or even a doctor herself, though probably too old (and too old-fashioned) to be practising. It explained the house: once stately, now almost beyond her, both woman and house hopelessly d?class?.

"Rodan, Mrs Davinon. Rodan. Like the flying creature in that Japanese monster movie, if you know it."

(Japan, yes! A stretch, but he might have been in some old embassy building in Kyoto or Osaka, and wished that he was, that the search had led there. There were some good bone ships in Japan. But not the Gautier ship. Not the Felice.)

"I can't say I do, Mr Ro-dan," she said, pronouncing it with too much inflection, too much emphasis, letting him know she was a dutiful study. "I don't keep up with the latest films any more." She offered him the cakes and he took one. "But like I say, I only hope I'm not wasting your time. There must be other Davinons."

Oh there were, there were, as he knew only too well- in Montreal and Ontario and in Marsala on Sicily. In Madrid, Trieste and Buenos Aires. Hundreds in Paris, thousands all over France. But the research and the search had led here, to Parkes in this horrid, blazing, Australian summer.

He wiped crumbs away carefully. "The facts are quite conclusive, madame," he said, realising that he sounded frightfully formal. Something about the old house, about this quaint, premature relic of a country doctor's wife, seemed to make it appropriate. "As I said when I phoned, all the evidence points to the Davinons in Parkes. I am very hopeful."

More than hopeful. That was why it had been a phone call from Sydney, no letters of introduction, no polite enquiries. He was sure of his facts and he was on a time limit. Others were on the same trail.

"Well, we're the only Davinons in Parkes. The family has been in this house since 1845." She pronounced it as "Davinnens" as if to rhyme with "paraffin", one more vile atonal anglicisation Paul had lived with for so long. It was Paul's single rebellion: keeping to the French "Duh-vin-non", with its stress on the second "n".

And now the woman was frowning with polite concern.

"When I said on the phone that my great-to-the-fourth-grandfather brought his father's things from Paris, I tried to make it clear that they've been looked over again and again."

Paul concealed the excitement he felt, the very real wave of -- yes -- agitation that came over him. So near, so very near. It was such an intimate, urgent feeling.

"But they took nothing away you said, Mrs Davinon. You said they looked through the papers, but you and your husband allowed nothing to be taken."

"That's right. Charles was very strict about it." She leaned over and poured him more tea. "Apart from the historical society people, everything has been kept in the attic untouched for 60 years. But looked over again and again before that."

"So you were with them while they made this recent examination?"

"Of course." Again Mrs Davinon frowned, and Paul cautioned himself. Too keen. He was being too forward, too keen. "But, then again, Mr Ro-dan, we did not search them at the door."

Paul made himself smile and nod, taking the rebuke. "I am deeply sorry, Mrs Davinon. I meant no offence. I have come a long way in the hope of at last settling this mystery in my family's history. A long way in time -- the years spent making such a search -- and now in space, travelling here to your wonderful country. I apologise again if I seem -- too eager."

His hostess seemed mollified. She gave a smile and a nod of her own; it was all so courtly between them.

"There are no valuables. Charles and I checked. Everyone has checked. Just papers and a few oddments."

Oddments, Paul almost parroted, but was able to stop himself. He nodded again, showing interested respect while his thoughts raced. So near, so near. Bettelmann and Lucas were half a world away, chasing their leads, quizzing other Davinons in other lands, sending out their letters and interminable emails, making their phone calls. He could take enough time. And he could use force if necessary. That was why he hadn't registered at a motel in town yet; this way there would be no trace. Just the hire car paid for in cash, using the false ID, the false name. Easy to fob off. He was a museum acquisitions expert by profession, he'd say. Discretion was always essential. There were reasons.

So he sat sipping the awful tea, nibbling one of the -- what were the horrid things called: lillingtons? livingstons? Then, judging his time, he continued.

"It is nothing valuable in the monetary sense, Mrs Davinon. It is information, documentary proof about the fate of a model of a ship. More clues perhaps. My own great to-the-fifth-uncle was involved with your ancestor in connection with it."

"And it's to do with this ship?" Mrs Davinon said.

"Model ship. Exactly."

"Then what are you looking for? You must explain it, Mr Ro-dan. I'm sure I present as a country doctor's wife and must strike you as very provincial by your practised European standards, but I assure you I am a sharp customer by my own lights and I love history. That's part of why Charles held on to his father's things. They've been passed down. I belong to the local historical society here. Some of our meetings are held in this very room. I may not have all of your conservationist's gloss, but I am active enough."

My, isn't that wonderful, Paul would have said 10 minutes, five minutes earlier, but now she had cautioned him with her boast of being a "sharp customer", and the glint in her eye warned of a native cunning. As dangerous as intelligent people were, Paul had found those who thought themselves intelligent often presented a much greater danger. They were obdurate, more wilful by far, usually less tractable.

Instead, Paul nodded as if to a peer. "May I just say as one sharp customer to another that it is a relief to be with a woman who understands the absolute importance of custodial care, madame. You are being most kind." He deliberately laid on the continental charm, though in subtleties, he liked to think, not broad strokes. It had always worked for him before. He wanted coffee and p?t?, but now, smiling wonderfully, he held out his cup for more tea as if it were ambrosia, and took another of the wretched lillington things.

He was Paul Louis Rodan, former museum acquisitions agent, now freelance raider of history and resolute builder of a history of his own, and he was very close to owning the Gautier ship, the Felice. Bettelmann and Lucas be damned!

"Now I must have the story you have only hinted at, Mr Ro-dan," Mrs Davinon said, and reached down and brought up a small tape recorder. "If you have no objections, I will tape what you tell me. For my own records."

"Not at all, madame." (If it came to force, that could easily be disposed of.) Paul waited till she had set it next to the tea service on the table between them and switched it on. There was none of the "testing, testing" that amateurs so often went on with. Mrs Davinon had already practised with it. It made Paul even more circumspect. She was indeed a sharp customer.

"Madame, are you familiar with what are called Prisoner of War Models -- models of sailing ships built by prisoners interned during the Napoleonic Wars?"

"Only in the most cursory fashion. I know there is some mention of it in the papers upstairs. Or, rather, a model ship is mentioned. It is made of bone."

"Exactly. Between 1793 and 1815, the English were constantly at war with the French. During this great struggle, as you may be aware, Dartmoor Prison was built to house over 8000 French prisoners of war. Americans, too, fighting on the French side. Other prisons were use...