Sarah mounted the flight of granite steps leading to the broad bluestone verandah of Canterbury Downs. Black shutters guarded the mansion’s windows. From the enormous oak-panelled front door, to the profusion of marble garden statues, the place oozed old money. She tried to imagine a little boy bouncing balls off the dark walls or playing in the manicured garden. She failed. It seemed no place for children.
Sarah raised the big bronze door knocker cast in the shape of a boar’s head. It fell with a dead thud. Muffled barking came from the rear of the house. A chorus of dogs, big ones by the sound of them. Sarah frowned. She didn’t like dogs. After waiting for a few moments, she tried the handle. The heavy door swung in on well-oiled hinges. Sarah knocked again, this time on the jamb.
‘Mr Abbott?’ Her voice echoed in the great space.
No answer.
The foyer was dominated by a monstrous wall-mounted moose head beside a cantilevered stone staircase.
Sarah wandered in, admiring the artwork, avoiding the hulking moose. Her favourite painting was a luminous forest scene of exotic animals in pairs, with an ark waiting in the hazy distance. Quite charming. Peering close she could make out a signature, Brueghel, and a faint date. The painting was five hundred years old. The next four paintings were equally ancient: scenes of four seasons by the same artist. What must they be worth?
The only contemporary piece was a portrait of a young woman. She bore a striking resemblance to Matt. A certain shyness, the same unsettling brown eyes, the nose softer, though. Now she’d met his mother, she was more curious than ever to meet Matt’s father.
Sarah held a breath and listened. There, a series of soft pops coming from somewhere at the back of the house. She went through the door on her right into an elegant lounge room with a snow-white marble fireplace in classic columns. Then into a breakfast room, beneath a hemispherical dome pierced by lunettes. Floor-to-ceiling cedar shutters on French doors led to a stone-flagged verandah. Sarah looked across the sweeping lawns to the stately elms, across the ornamental lake and serpentine paths. A low rock wall, topped with a hedge of lavender, separated the orchard from the formal gardens. The pops sounded loudly from that direction.
Sarah crossed a stone bridge over the wall, and there he was. A tall man, wearing headphones and goggles – firing a pistol at a curved grass berm. Baffles topped the embankment. Six steel target plates stood bolted to a cast iron stand, solid black circles on white backgrounds. Red flags fluttered, positioned between the firing line and the target. With each pop, a target spun around and automatically reset itself. The shooter didn’t miss once.
At last Fraser Burns Abbott lowered his weapon and leaned on a timber bench topped with sandbags. His shoulders sagged, yet when he turned and saw her he no longer looked weary. Fraser offered his hand on her approach, his expression unfathomable behind dark glasses. He took Sarah’s hand and pressed it to his lips while she stared at his weapon. It looked like a fancy toy. ‘May I touch it?’
‘A woman of taste.’ He slid the gun onto her open palm. It felt cool and heavy.
‘An 1880 Colt 45 single-action six-shooter, factory-engraved with walrus ivory grips. A beauty, eh? It belonged to my great-grandfather.’ He pointed out the name Henry Abbott imprinted on the gold-plated back strap beneath the barrel. ‘I gave this gun to Matthew on his sixteenth birthday.’
It really was exquisite. Each inch of steel boasted engravings of bears. A gold inlaid boar charged from the ivory handle. Fraser turned the pistol over in her hand. On the other side was a carved bull’s head with gold-tipped horns. Sarah looked up into eyes that might have been Matt’s eyes, and closed curious fingers on the gun.
Fraser gently pried it from her. ‘Dr Sarah Deville, I presume?’
‘Mr Abbott.’
‘Fraser, please.’
Sarah smiled. ‘Your home is magnificent.’
‘Indeed, although the plumbing remains a riddle.’ He rubbed the barrel of his pistol. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’
‘I’m simply here to thank you,’ said Sarah. ‘For that amazing donation. To be honest, you’ve more than doubled our budget.’
He pinned her in his intense gaze. ‘I hope we can always be honest with each other, Sarah.’ An unearthly howling started up behind her. She turned to see two massive black dogs bounding at the fence of a grassy run. ‘My newfoundlands, Sasha and Bruno,’ said Fraser. ‘It’s traditional to keep a pair here at Canterbury Downs.’
Sarah stared at the baying, leaping dogs. Thank goodness the great creatures were behind the fence. She followed Fraser back into the house, across the polished parquet floors and into the library, with its walnut wainscoting and high-beamed ceilings. He flicked a switch on the wall and soft classical music sounded through the house.
‘Brahms,’ said Fraser. ‘His second piano concerto, almost a symphony.’
‘Third movement,’ said Sarah. ‘This cello solo is quite unique.’
Fraser inclined his head, approvingly.
Sarah took in the library: the white tiger skin on the floor, the tall grandfather clock. ‘That clock is gorgeous. What are those tiny spinning moons?’
‘Lunar dials,’ said Fraser. ‘They show the precise phase of the moon at a glance. In days gone by, if you planned to travel at night by horseback or coach, the journey was far safer by the light of a full moon. Bushrangers and other scoundrels liked to operate under the cover of new moon darkness.’
One whole wall of the library was lined with a grand cherry-wood gun cabinet boasting maple inlays and glass doors. Strip lighting cast a soft, even glow over the collection of rifles and pistols. One velvet rest lay empty.
‘Excuse me, my dear.’ Fraser cleaned his ivory six-shooter, then put it back in place.
An old man in a suit arrived, announcing, ‘Afternoon tea is served in the breakfast room.’
‘Thank you, McGregor.’
‘Is he an actual butler?’ whispered Sarah, as Fraser led her next door to coffee and a selection of cakes.
‘Butler, confidant and friend.’
Sarah picked up a squat skull from a side table as Fraser handed her a cup of coffee. ‘A devil?’
Fraser nodded and indicated the powerful jawbone. ‘Very like a hyena. Our devils generate the strongest bite per body mass unit of any living mammal.’
The butler came in and handed Fraser a glossy magazine with a twelve-tyned stag’s head on the cover. ‘Your new Van Dyke’s Review, sir.’
‘Thank you, McGregor. How very exciting.’ He turned to Sarah. ‘It’s a catalogue of the latest taxidermy supplies. Forms, tools, glass eyes …’
What was it with Tasmanians and stuffing animals? ‘May I see?’ Sarah flipped through page after page of featureless polyurethane animals forms. Pale, eyeless, earless ghosts in various poses: crouching, leaping, climbing, running, attacking. ‘A hippopotamus?’ said Sarah. ‘Who stuffs an entire hippo?’
‘A younger man than myself, I suspect,’ said Fraser. ‘I did once mount a baby humpback for Hobart Museum. Now that was a challenge.’
‘Where on earth did you find a baby whale?’
‘The unfortunate youngster was an orphan, or perhaps merely lost. He mistook a yacht for his mother and wouldn’t leave its side – even trying to suckle. I had the devil of a time getting a custom model made for him.’
‘How awful. Couldn’t he be saved?’
‘I don’t think even my son would be foolish enough to try raising a two-tonne whale calf, requiring six hundred litres of milk a day. I’m sorry if I sound harsh, Sarah, but it really was for the best. The baby had suffered shark bites and was weak and infected. I donated the money to have it sedated and euthanised.’ Fraser put away the catalogue. ‘Enough gloomy talk. Tell me about your work, Sarah. I’m a tremendous admirer.’
‘Thank you.’ She tried to put the sad story of the whale out of her mind. ‘We’re really improving the devils’ chance of survival.’
‘I meant your other work,’ said Fraser. ‘Your human disease research.’
Sarah brightened. ‘That’s my main passion. Next generation gene sequencing is changing the whole face of medical science. I’m analysing entire chains of prostate cancer DNA. Imagine if we could genetically engineer a cancer cell. Turn it off, so to speak. Or a body cell, turn on its immune response. Imagine if we could accurately predict the probability of the disease based on genetic testing? Early stage prostate cancer has an excellent prognosis, but so many men find out too late.’
‘Indeed,’ said Fraser.
‘Devil cancer may serve as a model to help explain prostate cancer growth. Perhaps I’m being optimistic, but I think a real cure is close. Did you know that Matt is helping?’
‘How so?’ Fraser offered Sarah a lemon slice.
‘Collecting devil hair samples so I can widen my DNA database. Have you heard of museomics? No? It’s the large-scale analysis of the DNA content in whole museum collections. I must admit that I find your interest in stuffing animals macabre, but thanks to taxidermists, museums are turning out to be treasure troves for molecular zoologists. I consulted with a team who have even sequenced part of the thylacine genome.’ Sarah sipped her coffee. ‘They extracted DNA from the hair of two museum specimens.’
‘Will they ever clone thylacines back to life, I wonder?’
‘Sadly, no,’ said Sarah. ‘We don’t have enough genetic material.’
‘Pity. It has always been a dream of mine to mount a thylacine and display it in my studio,’ said Fraser. ‘Father told me stories about his grandmother, Isabelle Abbott. She kept three thylacine pups as pets when she was a girl. Her father made her release them when they grew up. Apparently they were quite charming.’
‘I’m sure they were – like Penny’s devils are charming. I’d rather see one alive than stuffed, though.’
‘Of course, just a foolish fancy of mine. Finish your coffee and come see my work. Perhaps you’ll become a convert.’
He took her to a sandstone studio in the garden. It was the size of a small house and was crammed with hunting trophies. Bears and boars and birds, all in lifelike poses. A snow leopard reclined on a high log. A lion seized an impala by the neck, while a warthog raced to safety, tail in the air. Sarah could almost hear it squeal. The animals looked absolutely alive, as if they might leap at her any minute. She remembered the worn-out little devil back at the Field Museum of Chicago that had originally sparked her interest in this project. Chalk and cheese. Fraser hadn’t just captured the physical bodies of these animals. He’d captured their spirits as well.
Fraser watched Sarah, anticipating the thrill that would come when she appreciated the truth of his work, the excellence of it. There it was. Fraser sighed with satisfaction and led her into the next room. ‘My work in progress.’ A crouching three-metre tiger prepared to strike. Sarah took an instinctive step backwards. ‘A Siberian tiger, the world’s largest cat,’ said Fraser.
Sarah paled. ‘And critically endangered. Wherever did you get this animal?’
‘Shot him in China last year. Quite legally. I have all the required paperwork.’
‘I know rather a lot about these tigers,’ said Sarah, her voice taut. ‘We use them as models to predict devil population outcomes. Because, just like devils, Siberian tigers are on the genetic brink of extinction. Do you know how many are left in the wild?’
‘Fewer than five hundred,’ said Fraser, fondling the tiger’s ears.
‘But if you know that, how could you possibly …’
‘This is a ten-year-old male, superfluous to the Chinese breeding program. For a fee, an extravagant fee, such tigers can be released into private parks and hunted. These fees help fund the Daqing Centre, housing over eight hundred Siberian tigers. Eighty cubs were born there last year alone. There are gene variants found in captivity that no longer persist in the wild, isn’t that so?’
‘Yes, but canned hunts? Shooting fish in a barrel? That’s cruel and pointless.’
Fraser still stroked his tiger. ‘My old friend here was removed from the concrete cage in which he’d lived his entire life, and released into a two-thousand-hectare reserve. Forty feeding stations scattered throughout the park were randomly baited once a week with carcasses, encouraging him to range far and wide. He swam in the Tai Shan river and sharpened his claws on century-old birch trees in the forests of his native Manchuria, lived a winter in the snow.’ Fraser ran a finger along a narrow tan stripe in the shaggy pale-gold mane. ‘He even learned to hunt. Not all of them do, you know. Wild boar and red deer. It made quite a challenge, tracking him down. He died from a single bullet to the head after nine months of freedom. Alternatively, he could have been euthanised in his cage. Tell me, if I asked him, which death would he choose?’
Sarah’s next argument died on her lips. She turned away from the tiger. ‘What’s this one’s story then?’ She pointed to an eagle with a two-metre wingspan, frozen as it landed on a branch.
‘Gunshot injuries. Not, I might add, inflicted by me.’
‘It looks so real,’ said Sarah. ‘You’re a great artist.’
‘Well, thank you, Sarah, but I’m afraid I can’t take credit for this one. It’s the work of a talented student of mine.’
‘There are more taxidermists in this town?’
‘You already know her. This eagle is the work of my daughter-in-law, Penelope. No need to mention it to Matthew. I’m afraid my son is not a fan of mine.’