A Burial at Sea (21 page)

Lenox turned. It was Butterworth himself. “Just the man I was looking for.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I have a few questions for you.”

“About what?” said Butterworth, his face suspicious.

“About Lieutenant Halifax.”

“Oh?”

“I was curious where you were during the middle of the night, when Halifax died.”

“I was fast asleep, leastways until Mr. Carrow came down to fetch my master.”

“You didn’t leave this cabin?”

“Not after supper, no.”

“Did Mr. Billings?”

“No! And if you’re implying—if you think—”

Lenox waved a hand. “Save your outrage, please. I only wanted to know if one of you might have seen something.”

Indignantly, Butterworth said, “Which and if we had, don’t you think we would have
told?
”

“Sometimes we may see things without seeing them.”

“I don’t understand riddles, Mr. Lennots, and I won’t answer ’em.”

“Tell me this, anyway—on the day of the voyage, did you notice anything peculiar?”

“No,” said Butterworth stoutly.

“Nothing?”

“Maybe excepting yourself.”

“You’re dangerously close to rudeness, Mr. Butterworth.”

Butterworth rolled his eyes, and then with a sullen bow of his head, said, “Apology.”

McEwan came out into the wardroom, munching on what looked as if it might be the toast Lenox had left uneaten on his plate, and, though it didn’t sound very good, whistling through the crumbs.

“Will you give us a moment?” said Lenox to him.

“Oh! Sorry, sir. I was coming to ask permission to polish your toast rack, the one with the letters in it?” Then he added, whispering, “It’s silver.”

“Yes, go on,” said Lenox. “But go!”

“I’m vanished, I’m positively vanished already, sir,” said McEwan, and as proof put a finger up to his crumb-covered lips.

When they were alone again, Butterworth said, “If that will be all—”

“No, it won’t. I asked you if you saw anything unusual on the day before Mr. Halifax was murdered. You say you didn’t. I ask you to consider again—did you see anyone unusual around Mr. Billings’s cabin? Anyone who might have stolen something from your master?”

Butterworth looked uneasy now, and Lenox saw he had struck a nerve. “No,” was all the man said, however.

“You did—I can see it on your face. Who was in Lieutenant Billings’s cabin?”

“Nobody, sir.”

“It’s ‘sir’ now, is it? You must tell me—a man is dead.”

“But it doesn’t mean anything!” said Butterworth.

“What doesn’t?”

The steward looked at Lenox for a long moment and then relented. “The captain. He insisted on looking through all the cabins in the wardroom on his own, the day of the trip.”

“The captain did? Is that usual?”

Butterworth shook his head. “No.”

“Did he give a reason?”

“He’s the captain. He don’t need no reason. But he wouldn’t have killed Halifax—it’s not possible.” This came out in a low moan. “Please, though, you mustn’t think he did anything! Mr. Billings idolizes him.”

“Be calm—I agree with you. It’s not possible. You may go, now—thank you.”

Lenox had told an outright lie. It was certainly possible that Martin had killed Halifax. First the whisky, and now the plain opportunity to have stolen both Carrow’s medallion and Billings’s pocketknife. The baffling absence of motive was all that held Lenox back from fully believing that Martin was the murderer.

Soon it was noon, and the daily ritual took place again, Lenox on the gleaming, swabbed, and holystoned quarterdeck to observe it. The midshipman called Pimples, under the supervision of Lee and Martin, took a sighting of the sun.

“Our latitude is thirty-five degrees north, and our longitude is six degrees west,” he said.

“You’ll see African soil soon, then,” Lee answered. “We’re close to passing through the strait between Morocco and Spain.”

All hands were piped to the midday meal, then, and the naval schedule continued apace.

It was two hours later that this routine was interrupted by the unthinkable.

It was Teddy Lenox who rushed to his uncle’s cabin, his face pale and his breath short. “It’s happened again!” he said. “Again!”

Lenox’s stomach fell. “Another murder?”

“Yes!”

“Who? Was it another lieutenant?”

Teddy could barely speak, but he managed to croak it out. “No,” he said, “the captain. Captain Martin is dead.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

There was a tremendous lurch somewhere deep in Lenox’s spirit.
I failed,
he thought to himself.
What business did I have trying to play detective again?
The contrapuntal voice that rose in his mind—
Who else was there to do it?
—he smothered quickly.

“Where?”

“In his cabin.”

“What does the body—are the wounds the same?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who found him?”

“Lieutenant Carrow.”

“I must go to the body.”

Lenox rose, and then, about to leave in a rush, stopped himself and looked his nephew in the eye.

He saw a frightened boy.

“Teddy, you’ll be safe, I swear,” he said.

“Who’s doing this, Uncle Charles?”

“I don’t know. But it doesn’t mean you’re in danger, or that I am.”

“I remember when I was at school I used to tell my friends about my uncle, the great detective.”

Lenox knew the boy wasn’t trying to be hurtful. “Listen, stay here in my cabin, would you? If you like, have one of those biscuits. I’ll come back in a few moments.”

Obediently, Teddy sat at Lenox’s desk.

The member of Parliament, feeling every one of his forty-two years, sprinted in the direction of Martin’s cabin. Every face he saw along the way was a study in shock and fear. Halifax’s death, terrible though it might have been, belonged to a lesser order of magnitude than Martin’s. He had been a captain in Her Majesty’s navy, a person of mammoth authority and responsibility, at times of crisis nearer a father than an officer to many of the bluejackets.

In Martin’s cabin were four men: Billings, who Lenox realized with a shock must be the acting captain, Carrow, the discoverer of the body, Tradescant, and Martin’s ancient, white-haired steward, who was seated on the edge of his dead master’s bed, weeping.

And a fifth man was also present, of course, when Lenox arrived. Martin himself. As Lenox had dreaded, the captain’s abdomen was butterflied open. The corpse was on its back, and the incisions upon it looked just as those upon Halifax had. It was a horrid, bloody mess. Around the neck he observed a red abrasion, a sign perhaps that Martin, unlike Halifax, had been garroted. His eyes were glassy and depthless. Lenox had to take a deep breath to steady his nerves.

Billings was the first to speak. He was pale, his voice tremulous. “A madman is loose on board our ship,” he said.

Lenox drew up to his full height. “You are the captain now, Mr. Billings. You must find the strength to face that.”

“Yes.”

“You are carrying a representative of Her Majesty’s government to foreign soil. That is more important than any … any fear you might feel.”

“Yes,” said Billings. “But, what shall we do?”

“First I must look over the body. Mr. Tradescant?”

“Yes?”

“Your assistants should come with a stretcher, that we may lay out Mr. Martin on the same table we did Mr. Halifax. Will you fetch them, or send someone to?”

“I will,” said Carrow.

“No, I’d like a word with you,” said Lenox. “Mr. Tradescant?”

“I’m on my way.” He paused, looking old and bewildered. “It had been such a good day, too, my one long-term patient awoken.”

“Has he? Is he well?”

“Sedated and anxious, very anxious, muttering all manner of things, but beyond danger. Ah, poor Mr. Martin.”

They all gazed down at the corpse for a moment, and then Tradescant exhaled, nodded, and left them alone.

“Sir, what is your name?” Lenox said to the old steward, seated on the bed, still crying.

“Four and thirty years I known him,” the man said, “since he were no more than a boy and pitched out as a midshipman. He took me off his father’s farm when he first hoisted his flag.”

“What is your name?”

“Slaton.”

“Mr. Slaton, look around you. Do you see anything unusual?”

The old man dried his eyes and scanned the large cabin, his eyes rolling over objects he must have tidied and orderered a thousand times out here upon the waves. “No.”

“Was he acting strangely?” Lenox said. “The captain?”

“He weren’t happy—the shot rolled, Mr. Halifax kilt—but he weren’t acting strange, neither.”

“I suppose I must look over his cabin later, at greater leisure,” said Lenox. “Thank you.”

He was surprised to hear a voice say “No.” It was Billings.

“Mr. Billings?”

“As you say, I am the captain of this ship now, and I don’t want Mr. Martin’s belongings disturbed and rooted through, as if he were a twopenny tramp dead of cold outside St. Paul’s Cathedral. He was a great man, and it will be his wife who goes through his things. You may look now, but after we leave here and Slaton cleans the blood”—at this the steward emitted a fresh sob—“we will seal this chamber.”

Lenox looked to Carrow for help, but there was approval on the younger lieutenant’s face. “Very well,” he said. “We must be thorough then.”

Tradescant appeared at the door, followed by two stout men with a stretcher. After Lenox had carefully walked around the body, inspecting the hands and the face of the dead captain, he permitted them to lift the corpse onto the stretcher and bear it away toward the surgery. Slaton hurried after them, as if he might still attend to his master’s orders even now. Lenox didn’t bother stopping the old man.

When they had removed Halifax’s body there had been left behind an unbloodied spot on the desk, surrounded by dried blood. The same happened now, though on a rich blue carpet.

Lying in the center of this Martin-shaped emptiness was a small, silvery object.

“Not again,” said Billings, his voice still weak. “My watch, no doubt, or perhaps Mr. Carrow’s.”

Lenox stooped and picked the objects up. “A silver tie chain,” he said, letting it run through his fingers. The chain was snapped. “Do you recognize it?”

Both men stepped closer, and then, as if in unison, both nodded. “It’s Mitchell’s,” said Carrow. Billings nodded. “He wears it nearly every day.”

Billings said, “Look on the reverse and you’ll find his initials.”

Lenox looked, and saw that Billings was correct. He sighed. What, now, could this mean? The chain was broken: had Martin broken it in the struggle and dropped it as he died? It would be important to discover, from Tradescant, whether Martin had fought back.

Lenox turned and scanned the room with his eyes again, restless for some clue.

His gaze alighted on a piece of paper that stood in a triangle on Martin’s desk.

“What is that?” he said.

“What?” Carrow asked.

“That piece of paper.” Lenox strode over and picked it up. His heart went into his throat; there was a finger-smudge of blood on the outside. He showed it to the two officers silently.

Their eyes widened. “Shall I look at it?” said Billings. “As captain?”

“It will say the same thing no matter which of us reads it,” said Lenox. “Here, we may all look it over together.”

The paper, of very coarse stock—the sort that left one’s fingers dark—was folded in half, and on the outside at any rate had no markings other than the blood. Lenox flipped it open and all three men looked on the message within at once.

The Lu is ares. Beware.

There was a long moment of disturbed silence.

“It means ‘ours’ of course,” said Carrow at last.

“And the ‘Lu’ is what men call the
Lucy,
” Billings added.

“Christ,” Lenox said. “I suppose the mutiny is serious.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

“I ought to go above deck,” said Billings. “We must meet this evening to confirm the news, but until then I must be seen. Mr. Carrow, when Mr. Lenox no longer requires your assistance, please pass out the word to your mess captains that we shall gather upon the stroke of six.”

“Yes, Captain,” said Carrow.

When these two men were alone in the room, blood not far from them on the carpet, Carrow let out a tremendous exhale. Lenox looked at him inquisitively. “Does something trouble you?”

“Only that it is the worst situation I have ever experienced afloat, and that I fear for our lives every moment.”

“Yes.”

Carrow sat at Martin’s desk, his habitual frown etched on his face, and took a bag of tobacco from his jacket sleeve. “Would you like to fill your pipe?” he asked. “It’s the worst, blackest sort of shag—only stuff I smoke.”

“No, I thank you.”

“I’m amazed you don’t need it, to steady yourself.”

Lenox paced toward a porthole. “You have found both bodies, Mr. Carrow.”

“So I have. The first in the company of your nephew, the second not fifteen feet from the captain’s galley, where Mr. Slaton was putting tea together. What of it?”

“Mr. Slaton admitted you?”

“No.”

“Then he had no way of knowing how long you had been in here.”

To Lenox’s surprise, Carrow laughed. “That’s true enough, sir. But if you think I killed either of these men, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for.”

“You understand that everyone on board the
Lucy
is a suspect.”

“Yes. But I have the good fortune of knowing, infallibly, that I did not murder Faxxie, nor Captain Martin.” He lit his pipe. “My god,” he muttered, less constrained than Lenox had ever seen him. “Both of them dead. Think of it. I shudder to imagine the newspapers. The navy scarcely needs the negative exposure.”

“Yes.”

Carrow puffed on his pipe, and blew the smoke through an open porthole. It was a bright, sparkling day now, light shimmering on the quick water. “The worst of it is the manner of the death. The brutality.”