THE DEVIL’S WORK

BY GARRY LINNELL

Frederick Deeming was a murderer, swindler and suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings, but the discovery by Australian police in 1892 of the body of one of his wives triggered one of the greatest manhunts in history. This novel delves deep into his twisted story…

Frederick Deeming had met Kate Rounsefell a few weeks after murdering his most recent wife. As usual, he had found himself falling hopelessly in love. Or falling in love at the prospect of another victim. He couldn’t help himself when it came to women. Couldn’t stay away from them. They were marvellous things and Frederick had always had a deep-seated need to please them and flatter them with praise and presents.

He had told the constant parade of doctors sent to study him that he understood this desire to be an addiction. But it was a craving that always seemed to end the same way. As quickly as he was drawn

to them, he was repulsed by them. None, it seemed, were like Mother, no matter how pious they pretended to be.

He had tried so hard to replace Mother after her death. But he was always disappointed. The women he found never matched her standards. Then she had started visiting him at night, her voice shrill, ordering him to kill.

Wives, girlfriends, even the whore in South Africa who had given him syphilis. They all had to go.

When Deeming first met Kate Rounsefell on a ship heading to Sydney, he was certain she would be his next bride. He had been on the run at the time using the alias of Baron Swanston. It was a name that hinted at titled nobility and that always suited Frederick Deeming just fine when he was out to impress.

Within a couple of days, the debonair Swanston had made his intentions quite clear. Kate had been reluctant at first. Why, she barely knew him. But he insisted on following her to her home town where he had impressed her older sister as a man of substance. Lizzie Rounsefell had asked Kate why she was waiting. A man like Baron Swanston did not come along often. Did Kate want to be a spinster for the rest of her life?

So Kate had agreed and accepted several lavish pieces of jewellery from her English beau. Kate told Baron she wanted to make a new start elsewhere and suggested the colony of Western Australia. It was on the other side of the continent and people were flocking to make fortunes on its newly discovered goldfields. So he had headed west and found a job, with Kate promising she would soon follow.

She had meant to keep that promise, too, until the news came through that a Baron Swanston, who was thought to be Albert Williams, who might have been Harry Lawson, who used to be Fred Dawson, or Duncan, or Drewn, or Dobson, or Ward, had been arrested at a remote goldmine and charged with the murder of his second wife.

Edited extract from The Devil’s Work by Garry Linnell (Penguin Australia, $34.99) out now.