A Watery Grave (30 page)

Wiki was sitting very still, scarcely breathing. “Can you think of any reason Burroughs would borrow a suit of Stanton's clothes and be so extremely grateful for the loan?”

Forsythe shrugged heavy shoulders. “Beats me. As far as I knew, they was enemies, but they must've made up when I wasn't noticin'—and the two of them was about the same size. Did you know they were cousins? Burroughs was as rich as Croesus, but no one would never have noticed it, because the silly swab went around in rags. He must've borrowed 'em for some grand occasion—he still had his hair all slicked back with that head oil smart folks use. What d'you call it? Macassar? Mebbe you're right, and the thousand was a little present to thank Stanton for his kindliness—but it was a present that Tristram Stanton didn't know about and was sure appreciated by me. I had it cashed before the day was out, and so I sailed out of debt.”

He reached for a ship's biscuit, which he dipped into the baked beans and then noisily crunched with his mouth open, all the time grinning at Wiki.

Wiki said carefully, “Was this before or after Ophelia was murdered?”

“It was a couple of hours after all the fuss and commotion when you salvaged the boat with her body inside. You never saw us, but we could see you—being hauled along the waterfront to the prison.”

“And Stanton was on horseback?”

“Right again, clever Mr. Coffin. I guess he had come straight from where you landed the boat. He looked altogether as if he'd been ridin' bloody hard, and through mud and water, at that.”

Mud and water. Wiki stared down at his mug, turning it between his palms, remembering how Tristram Stanton had looked when he had galloped out onto the riverbank to find a crowd gathered about his wife's corpse. He had been smartly and fashionably dressed but spattered with mud from top to toe, his knee-high boots badly water stained. Had he been wading through water, or had it all been thrown up by the horse's hooves?

Because he was hatless, Stanton's brown hair had flopped over his broad, meaty forehead and heavy eyebrows. It had certainly not been oiled, and yet when Stanton had arrived in his study that same afternoon, his hair had been greased and slicked back—why? Because when he had encountered Forsythe and Burroughs on the wharf, he had seen that Burroughs had dressed his hair that way, and he needed to keep up a deception?

Forsythe's harsh drawl jerked Wiki out of deep thought. “You want to see 'em?”

“What?”

“The suit of clothes.”

Wiki exclaimed incredulously, “You've still got them?”

“Yup.” The tone was complacent. Forsythe scraped back his chair and retreated to his cabin, coming back with a canvas kit bag, which he tossed onto the table. Out came claw-hammer coat, vest, trousers, white shirt, white silk stock, and black breeches. There was an oily stain on one fold of the stock, where it had rubbed against Burroughs's greased hair. Otherwise the clothes were clean, though very crumpled.

“It's no good going through the pockets,” Forsythe said with a sardonic grin. “They've been well overhauled, I assure you.”

Wiki was shaking his head in bemusement. “I can't believe you didn't get rid of them.”

Forsythe flushed at his tone and snapped, “He's my size, and I ain't rich enough to be proud. After all, they were bought with
my
family's money.”

Wiki said flatly, “You're a fool.”

“
What?
Why, you half-breed bastard, what the hell gives you the right to talk to me like that?”

Forsythe slapped his fists down on the table, shoving himself headlong out of his chair; but Wiki, though he stood up, too, his eyes narrowed dangerously, merely put up a hand.

“Oh, it was probably a spur of the moment inspiration on Stanton's part,” he said. “But it was an efficient trap, and there was a big chance it would have worked.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Wiki said patiently, “The man who came to the house to collect Ophelia's body posed as Tristram Stanton—and got away with it because he was wearing those clothes.”

Forsythe scowled this over, and then his eyes widened. “But it was John Burroughs who borrowed 'em!”

“Exactly.”

“So you reckon John Burroughs was the man who went to the house to collect Ophelia's corpse, stow it in that rotten old boat, and then shove her off into the river?”

“Aye.”

“Then you're the one who's a fool,” Forsythe said flatly. “I don't believe for a bloody instant that Burroughs had the guts to do anythin' so daunting.”

“Where sailing with the expedition was concerned, he was brave enough,” Wiki pointed out. “He was prepared to pay his cousin money to put in a good word with Captain Wilkes. Instead, the Stantons asked him to collect Ophelia's body. And, to make it easier for him to get away with it, they gave him this set of clothes.”

“So these clothes are proof of that? You're bloody jestin'!”

“I'm not,” said Wiki. “It must have been a nasty moment when Burroughs tried to return the suit so publicly. Being a quick thinker, though, Tristram Stanton took the chance to plant the evidence on you. If he's ever accused, he'll simply suggest that your sea chest be searched. You'd have a very hard job explaining those clothes away.”

“Is that so?” said Forsythe. He was staring at Wiki, his eyes very narrow. “He was plannin' to see me swing for Ophelia's murder, huh?”

“If necessary.” Wiki paused, and said, “There's something else on board this ship that would incriminate you, too.”

“Jesus lord,” said Forsythe, and jerked out a grunt of disbelieving mirth. “So what the hell else have you got for me, Mr. Deputy Coffin?”

“Come and see.” And Wiki led the way into his stateroom.

*   *   *

It was odd, he reflected, how much like the sheriff Forsythe looked as he lifted one of the rifles out of the box. There was the same air of professional admiration, though his expression held rank envy, too. “A Leman turn-barrel rifle,” the southerner said, as if to himself. “I've heard of 'em but never seen one before.”

“The sheriff called it a revolving rifle,” said Wiki, watching him. “You fire one barrel, turn it, and then fire the other, so you can get off two shots in quick succession.”

“Nice, very nice,” said Forsythe, and set the rifle back in the case. Then he picked up its twin, and inspected it in the same judiciously appreciative manner. Peering down the barrel with one eye half shut, he said, “So what have these rifles to do with incriminatin' me?”

“One of them was used to shoot holes in the boat that was floating off with Ophelia's corpse.”

“What—they shot her as well?” Forsythe exclaimed. He shook his head, his expression sour. “They sure was set on makin' her as dead as last week's mutton, huh? Poisoning was not enough, so they snapped her neck and shot her in the bargain.”

“I didn't say she was shot,” Wiki said. “And I think breaking her neck must have been an accident, because it turned out to be such a big problem. Stanton had organized the scene to make sure of a verdict of suicide—he probably even calculated the tides, so that the boat would be sighted before it sank. But when her neck was broken, it was obviously impossible to believe that she'd done it herself, which led to a lot of panic.”

Forsythe grunted, thinking this over. Then he asked shrewdly, “Who panicked?”

“A maidservant testified that she saw Tristram Stanton running down the stairs about three in the morning, carrying one of these rifles. But it must have been Burroughs.”

“So these guns are Tristram Stanton's.” Forsythe's lips pursed in and out, but he did not seem unduly surprised.

Wiki said, “When I was at the Stanton house with the sheriff's party, we saw one of these guns on display in his study—just one. Tristram Stanton told the sheriff he had bought the pair to bring along on the expedition. The other one was missing. He left it to us to work out that it had been stolen.”

“By Burroughs?”

“It must have been Burroughs,” Wiki said, though there was an uncomfortable nagging in the back of his mind that something critical had been missed. “As I said, he panicked. The boat was floating out of reach, so he galloped to the house, grabbed one of those rifles, and then raced back to the riverbank, hoping to sink it with a couple of well-placed shots before anybody noticed. It was an act of desperation, and because I was there it didn't work.”

Forsythe scowled, slowly taking this in. “So how did these guns get into this room?”

“Somehow, Stanton must have managed to retrieve the gun from wherever Burroughs had hidden it. It seems obvious that he sent the gun case on board with his astronomical equipment. Then, while we were on passage, he hid it. And it has been hidden here ever since.” Wiki jerked his chin at the back of the signal locker.

Forsythe lapsed into silence, frowning this over. Then he shook his head again. “Men who knew him would find it bloody hard to believe that John Burroughs had that kind of guts.”

Wiki opened his mouth, but no words came out, because the nagging thought had abruptly materialized. The top hat, he thought—the top hat that had been left on Tristram Stanton's desk. There had been no trace of hair oil on the inside of that hat.

Which meant that John Burroughs—who had dressed his hair with oil on the night of Ophelia Stanton's murder—could not possibly have worn it.

Twenty-five

A hail echoed down from the deck above, and then Wiki felt the bump as a boat hit against the starboard side of the brig. He spun on his heel and sprinted eagerly up the companionway. To his great disappointment, however, Lieutenant Smith was alone.

Wiki demanded, “Where's George Rochester? Did you give him the packet?”

“I don't know where he is, and no, I did not give him the packet,” the tubby lieutenant said testily. “That's why we've taken so long. The whole ship is searching—we've lost him!”

Wiki's pulse started hammering with alarm. “What do you mean, you've lost him?”

“He vanished in the night. There's a general search, but we can't find him anywhere.”

My God,
thought Wiki. His thoughts were tumbling over each other with incipient panic. It was like a horrible echo of the disappearance of Jim Powell, only happening faster.

He looked over to where the flagship floated on the dead calm a half mile away and said tensely, “I have to get over to the
Vin.
”

“Well, you can't.”

“What?” Lieutenant Smith had sounded so disconcertingly like Forsythe that Wiki flinched.

“It's simply not possible, not right now,” Smith pronounced.

“Why not?” Wiki demanded.

“Because they are beating the drum for quarters.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There is general upset and confusion over the disappearance of a man who is a popular officer and one of our own, and as it is a flat calm it was considered a live exercise of the cannon would boost the men's spirits in this time of distress.”

Oh, dear Jehovah,
Wiki thought as he stared with narrowed eyes at the distant flagship, they were playing games instead of keeping up the hunt. Was this the value Captain Wilkes placed on a man who was lauded as a popular officer?

He spun round and snapped at Smith, “Did you see him at
all?
”

“Of course I saw him,” Smith said angrily, flushing at his tone. “I saw him at the feast.”

“Then you must've talked to him, surely!”

“How could I?” Smith turned with a sniff, heading for the companionway. “He's just a passed midshipman, you know.”

Wiki pursued him, anger making his movements jerky and fast. “And what the devil is that supposed to mean?” he demanded.

“That's no way to talk to me, young man. It means that I was at the top of the table with Captain Wilkes and Astronomer Stanton, and he was right down at the bottom with the other midshipmen, where he belongs.” Then Lawrence Smith added peevishly over his shoulder as he rattled down the stairs, “And an infamously noisy lot they were, too. Shouting, arguing, cheering—a disgraceful performance, truly.”

They arrived at the bottom of the stairs. Wiki put a hand on the lieutenant's shoulder and spun him around, but still the choleric little eyes refused to meet his urgent stare. “What about after the feast was over?”

Shrugging Wiki's hand away, Lieutenant Smith went over to the table and rang the little bell he kept specially for summoning the steward. “As the midshipmen and junior lieutenants were leaving the table,” he said loftily, “Captain Wilkes included me in the gracious invitation he extended to a select few of the officers and scientifics to stop behind for a few circuits of the decanter—and you couldn't possibly expect me to offend our commander with a rude refusal just on account of your friend! Then when it was over the hunt was up; and it was generally reported that Rochester was nowhere to be seen.”

Wiki said softly and dangerously, “So you were drinking madeira with Captain Wilkes while George Rochester was in trouble. You didn't even try to give him the packet—and yet you had made your promise to me, as an officer and a gentleman.”

Smith did not even bother to pay attention to his words, let alone take note of the tone. Instead, turning away from Wiki as the steward poked his head out of the pantry, he ordered a pot of fresh coffee and for his private box of cake to be produced. That communicated, he condescended to look at Wiki again, his eyebrows lifted.

“While I sincerely regret your friend's mysterious disappearance, Wiremu,” he enunciated, his tone elaborately patient, “you must accept the plain and simple fact that I was unavoidably detained at the time.”

“My God,”
Wiki hissed. It took a physical effort to restrain himself from lifting his clenched fist. Then he registered a movement behind his shoulder.