Executive Director and principal shareholder of the steam traction company owning and operating the trains), he’d have realised instantly that both his business empire and his personal fortune would have come down with it.
To all other relevant parties, however – the creditors, shareholders, financial institutions, insurance companies, investigation agencies, Commissions of Enquiry and the Department of Inland Revenue people – it must have seemed as if Sir Oliver had simply anticipated the disaster somehow and vanished in front of the shockwave (so to speak).
And vanish he did, as far as the rest of the world was concerned, allegedly living out his life in the East Indies, very much at peace with himself, his several wives and his many many children. His only true regret, according to South Pacific scuttlebutt, was the loss of his brass telescope, though why this should have been so was never explained.
What the official record could never have confirmed, however, was the thrust of some earlier allegations and rumours circulating around the London waterfront pubs and brothels frequented by Sir Oliver – or “Rollover” as he was more affectionately known to the ladies of bar and bedroom.
The stories were many and varied, with the details becoming more fulsome and the circumstance more lurid at each telling. Yet aspects were found to emerge which exhibited a curious consistency. These centred on a fabulous gem, an allegedly flawless, almost luminous, blood-red star ruby, of awesome size and unimaginable value.
It was known as the Star of Pushqaaht, and its religious significance was said to be immense and its powers legendary. Even so, being what it was and where it was supposedly situated, the gem’s existence had never been actually confirmed, certainly by the eyes and ears of any non-believer.
Sir Oliver Rollington Parker-Flinte only visited the Middle East on the one occasion, and that was as a young gad-about adventurer with of a group of like-minded London rakes. Nothing is known of their activities there, or why, after less than a month, Sir Oliver turned up in London again without fanfare and resumed his social schedule as if never having been absent.
Those surviving that misadventure later suggested that he too may have fallen foul of Pushqaaht’s cultural and/or Islamic religious laws, and that his unconfirmed departure from there in the bilge of a sewage dhow was simply an expedient if colourful means of achieving safe passage. Some even wished they’d thought if it themselves.
Whatever the case, this alleged “Star of Pushqaaht” gem had supposedly gone missing, and angry rumours of its happening at the hand of an infidel had spread through the city’s mosques and marketplaces like wildfire – assertions that would not have been taken lightly, it must be said, by the dedicated young religious initiates who’d sworn to die if necessary in protecting it (should the object actually exist).
Naturally enough Sir Oliver denied any knowledge of the business – the stone, its whereabouts and all else thrown up by the rumours. One can only presume, however, that he did this more from the comfort and safety of his London Club than from the forecourt steps of the Temple of The Blood of The Prophet, in the Pushqaahti capital, Dhungwadi.
Then, more than a hundred years later, interest in the Parker-Flinte expedition was suddenly renewed. This came about when the gold prospectors Vanner and Pann discovered a glass eye and a few pathetic shreds of dried flesh and heavy cotton-drill trousers, near what is now the southern extremity of the Queensland / Northern Territory border.
The glass eye was certainly convincing. This was Peter Parker-Flinte’s last resting place, historians assured each other, the assumption being that he’d perished in pursuit of Monsignor deBris and his personal possessions. Birds and animals would have scavenged his body, they reasoned; time and the elements would have mummified what little remained.
Next to visit the scene was a group of Parker-Flinte’s descendants. They’d come in two charted four-by-four buses and two support vehicles – also four-by-fours, and had made the trip from England especially to hold a memorial service at that desolate location.
Following this the party remained in the area for several weeks, “...in order to pay our respects in a reflective and unhurried manner,” (they claimed). During this time it is believed they line searched some forty square kilometers of sand hills and spinifex “…in an effort to ensure that all of Mr Parker-Flinte’s remains might be discovered and respectfully consigned to the earth,” it was later explained.
Not that any of his remains ever were. Both the glass eye and the fragments of clothing and dried skin were retained by the Crown as historical relics and passed on to the University for safekeeping and study.
That was not the end of the affair, however. A few years later it was shown somewhat controversially that the organic relics at least were not vestiges of the missing explorer’s remains at all, but were instead fragments of his waterbag.
This astonishing detail came to light after an archaeology student named Felicity Midden gained access to the items as part of her research. The actual observation was made by her elderly grandfather, who was visiting Midden at the university that day.
A retired droving contractor, he’d over the years assembled one of the country’s finest collections of historical waterbags, and was disappointed when his attempts to add the fragments to his collection were rejected.
About then Ms Midden realised the significance of the glass eye. It was Parker-Flinte’s spare, she argued, and the waterbag was the obvious place he would have kept it – providing, as it did, an environment totally free of dust and lint.
This is now generally accepted to be correct; certainly it would explain the prosthesis being found in the waterbag’s vicinity.
Such being the case, a supposition can be made in respect of the circumstances leading to these items being discovered where they were, given that Monsignor deBris was known to be the last person in possession of them. It would have been inevitable, Midden maintains, that sooner or later deBris would have discovered the concealment of a foreign body within the waterbag, and one of large and regular proportions.
We can safely assume, too, the Monsignor’s awareness of the conjecture surrounding his recent employer’s father, so we can be sure of his expectation as to what exactly would be revealed on his opening the waterbag. And, knowing the extent of this great and all encompassing certainty, means we can gauge, utterly, the depths of his disappointment on discovering that the largish round object concealed therein was not the one thing it absolutely had to be.
In the heat of that moment he’d have divested himself of the offending item with all the vigour he could muster, following which he would then have distanced himself from it as rapidly as possible.
And, whatever the exact nature of those circumstances, this is the last thing we know with any certainty concerning the infamous Monsignor deBris.
...Except to say, that about a time and place appropriate for events to have taken their natural course, a person of unknown origins was sighted and picked up from an isolated north west Australian Kimberly cove beach by a small coastal trading vessel – at the time (and despite the tide) sailing close inshore. The vessel was the “Pigbucket”, and it is generally accepted that it was there at the time to avoid being sighted by the British Man’o’war H.M.S. Volute – charged with intercepting vessels suspected of being used for the purposes of smuggling.
This person was in a terrible state – half starved, dehydrated, clothes in tatters and covered in cuts and scratches. His words were incoherent nonsense and his eyes were wide with the fear of demons only he could see.
His pockets, however, were full of gold nuggets.
This interesting detail was only revealed by the Pigbucket’s First Mate a week or so later. Apparently he’d supported the poor wretch as they’d lifted him aboard, though at the time of making this revelation he was having trouble speaking due to his swollen mouth and broken teeth.
“…meant to tell you b’fore,” he explained to his shipmates during the impromptu Broome
waterfront meeting they were holding when this interesting detail came to light, “but I forgot.”
The Pigbucket only made one voyage subsequent to that and this was back to the beach where the rescue was effected. There she sank at her moorings in questionable circumstances, leaving the expedition stranded – if “expedition” is the appropriate term for the motley collection of half-baked semi-retired pirates and cut-throat nautical alcoholics that disappeared forever into the Kimberly’s maze of mountains and gorges looking for the castaway’s gold.
After waiting on the beach for several months the two left in charge fashioned themselves a raft and managed to sail it back to civilisation. No one believed their story and they were hanged for mutiny.
The castaway never regained his memory. Instead he did menial work around Perth’s early farms for a dozen or so years before dying in a dingo trap near the Buggerdup Gully woolshed.
As for the Parker-Flinte Expedition and its journey of exploration into the vast Australian interior, little more can be said. Some of our early explorers have students of history poring over their records and ferreting away at their doings by the horde, all of them trying to unearth some overlooked detail by which to establish a reputation for themselves. Yet, strangely, any who