Girl at Sea (25 page)

“What is all this?” she said to herself.

Clio took a deep breath in through her nose, then closed the file and pressed the clasp shut, taking the letter with her. As she came upstairs, she glanced out the glass doors and saw that it looked like the divers had already come up. Julia and Aidan were both by the back of the boat. She ducked into the galley for a moment and slipped the letter in between the pages of the 211

Indian cookbook, then continued out. Something wasn’t right.

There was too much activity. Her father was standing on the deck, but it looked like he was pulling something out of the water.

Except it wasn’t some
thing
. It was Martin.

212

A Kind of Truth

Martin was ashen-faced and sitting on the platform with his head between his knees.

“I’m all right,” he said. “Sometimes it just doesn’t agree with you, that’s all.”

“You sure?” her dad asked. “You don’t look good. Did you skip a stop on the way up? Are you experiencing narcosis?”

“Should I call a doctor?” Aidan asked.

“No,” Martin said. “It’s not that bad. I just got woozy on the last bit. Let me catch my breath, and then I’ll go and rest for the afternoon. I’ll be fine.”

Aidan and Clio’s dad helped him up and to his room, where he stayed for the rest of the day. That night, Clio made an Irish stew for dinner. That seemed like the kind of thing that might be good for someone who wasn’t feeling well. All day long, she was aware of the letter that was right there with her.

When she brought him his dinner, Martin was looking much 213

better. He sat propped up in his bed in his tiny cabin, reading a book by the light of a little fixture that came down over his shoulder. This room was no Champagne Suite. It was even smaller than Julia’s.

“I could smell something good,” he said. “And I didn’t feel like getting up. Clio, you’re a saint.”

He accepted the tray and set it on his lap.

“Are you feeling better?” Clio asked.

“Much,” he said, picking up a spoon and sampling the broth.

“Oh . . . that’s good.”

Clio reached behind her and shut the door.

“Are you okay enough for me to ask you something?” she said.

“I have never been injured by a question. Shoot.”

“Are we looking for the
Bell Star
?”

He smiled and poked a carrot around the bowl.

“What makes you ask something like that?” he said.

Clio produced the letter from the front pocket of her sweatshirt.

“Who wrote this?” she said. “Who’s Marguerite?”

One of Martin’s many good qualities was that he saw no sense in wasting time with lines of inquiry that would clearly get him nowhere, like, “Where did you get that?” He already knew the answer.

“The letter in your hand is from Dr. Alexander Magwell,” he said. “He was a professor in the late 1800s, specializing in antiquities. He left teaching to work with the British Museum.

He worked at Pompeii for a few months each year. He was returning home from an expedition when he boarded a ship 214

called the
Bell Star
. Before he left port, he mailed this letter to his daughter, Marguerite. He never made it home with what he found. That letter was put in with his papers, which were given to the British Museum.”

“So, we are looking for the
Bell Star
, right?” she said.

“Right.”

“And we’re looking for this stone?”

“Right again,” he said.

“So, we’re not just looking for a boat, which is hard enough.

We’re looking for a
rock
on a boat.”

“Again,” he said, “you’ve nailed it.”

“That’s . . .” Clio’s hands clawed up in frustration. “It’s not even insane. It’s something else. Insane can be fun. This is just bad.”

“It’s not impossible,” Martin said.

“No, it’s not impossible,” Clio said. “But do
you
think it’s going to work?”

“Stranger things have happened,” he said.

“I lost a really cool sock a few years ago,” she said. “Can we go look for that next?”

“We actually know a lot,” Martin said. “The
Bell Star
was a British-built ship. For the last five years of her life, she ran between Naples, Italy, and Marseille, France, handling passengers and cargo. She left on her last run on May 25, 1897.

No one knows exactly what happened, but she definitely went down sometime between the twenty-sixth and the twenty-seventh. She often stopped in Civitavecchia, which is just north of here. They were expected to stop there on this journey. They never did. So, using the spot where the
Bell Star
was last sighted 215

as a point of reference, we’ve figured out three likely places where she could be. Plus we have a few potential sites that we got from divers and some hang numbers from a fisherman.”

“You mean dive coordinates?” Clio asked.

“I mean dive coordinates,” he said. “Right. Wrecks are often found in places where the fishing is really good or nets get stuck or lost. We’ve already hit the first four. We have a few more to go.”

“Okay,” Clio said. “Maybe we can find the boat and maybe even the stone. It’s not likely, but okay. The question is why.

Why us? Why do we care? Why is my dad funding this and not Cambridge, or the British Museum, or some big organization?”

“That is a slightly more complicated question,” he said. “One I can’t really answer.”

“And the secrecy,” Clio went on. “Why is everyone being so CIA about an old rock?”

“I think that’s Julia’s request, but your dad is doing it in his normal style. A little over the top.”

“Martin,” Clio said, leaning in. “I have been in some strange situations in my life, but this is definitely the winner of the Weird Olympics. This letter? It’s an original. Not a copy. So how did it get out? My mom works in museums. They’re
serious
about keeping their stuff. So how did it end up with us?”

“Julia said that a colleague turned up with it one day, that it must have gotten out of the museum years ago, just gotten lost in the shuffle, sometime back before computers, before there was sophisticated security. They have a lot of documents at the British Museum. Millions upon millions. It’s one of the world’s 216

largest collections of . . . anything, really. And it’s not an especially important letter, as far as the museum is concerned.

I’m sure no one ever noticed it was gone. It was just a personal letter from a long-dead academic.”

“A colleague?” Clio repeated. “That’s not very specific.

Someone just walked in one day and handed her this letter, and she showed it to my dad, and then he bought a yacht to go find it? Come on, Martin. It’s time to tell me everything.”

“I’ve just told you everything I know,” he said. “Really. I wanted to tell you about the
Bell Star
sooner, but I was asked not to. But even I don’t know much. I came along because I thought maybe your father was jumping into this a bit too fast. I did have the time, and I thought it would be fun to learn to dive. The boat was an extreme move, I admit. But he
can
resell it. This
might
be very worthwhile.”

He reached over to the bedside stand and fumbled around for his key, which he passed to her.

“This is a master key,” he said.

“I know.”

“I figured you did. Take it and put that letter back where you found it. I’m going to eat my stew.”

Martin picked up his fork and started in properly. Clio caught sight of a small bottle tucked behind the alarm clock. It had been hidden until he had reached for the key. She picked it up.

“Nitroglycerin,” she said, reading off the label. “Isn’t this for heart problems?”

“What,” he said with a smile. “Are you a doctor?”

“No,” Clio said. “I watch a lot of TV. I’ve seen commercials for medicines. Plus there’s a sticker of a heart on the bottle.”

217

“Ah,” he said. “Well spotted.”

“Martin, are you . . . okay? Really?”

“Just a little chest pain,” he said. “I’ve had it for a while. It’s nothing serious.”

“Should you be here, doing this? Diving?” she asked. “Does my dad know?”

“The exercise is good for me,” he said. “I never got enough before. And the problem isn’t serious. I’m on plenty of medication for it, believe me. I’ll be fine. I just wore myself out a little today. You worry too much, Clio.”

He looked tired and like he wanted his dinner. Clio stood.

“Eat up,” she said. “I’ll bring you more if you want. Just call me on the com.”

“Clio,” he said. “Your dad was really down after the divorce.

Really down.”

“We
all
were,” she said.

“I know. But he took it all very personally. I was worried about him. He’s like a younger brother to me. I know you don’t like Julia. I wouldn’t expect you to. I know you think this is all a bit extreme—but that’s your dad. This is the first time since it all happened that I’ve seen him really acting like his old self. I came to make sure he stayed that way. I’m on your side. Both of your sides. I’m not going to let anything happen to him.”

This was reassuring, though Clio couldn’t help but bristle a little. The divorce
should
have hurt her dad. It was his fault, after all. She was the innocent one.

“I’ll bring your key back,” she said.

She walked over to Julia’s door, put the key in the lock, and then paused. Putting the letter back made sense. It meant that 218

there would be no trouble. But on some level she knew that she couldn’t give this letter back, not until she really got to the bottom of it.

She slipped the letter under her shirt as she went to return the key.

219

A General Malfunction

The next day was Mental and Physical Breakdown Day on the
Sea Butterfly
. There was no real sense of time to the day, either in the sky or in their activity. It seemed to be permanently stuck at a miserable four o’clock. The failures were adding up. That much was palpable.

They didn’t go anywhere. They stayed anchored between nowhere and nowhere. No one told Clio why, but she guessed they were planning again, trying to reassess which sites to dive.

Not that they really could dive with Martin down. Diving was something that always had to be done in pairs.

The weather was terrible to boot. It didn’t storm, but there was a miserable drizzle that made the sky and the water gray and going outside unappealing. The inside of the boat was too cold in the air-conditioning, but when they turned it off, became much too humid.

Martin remained in bed that morning, and Elsa kept to her 220

usual sleeping habits. Clio’s father, Aidan, and Julia holed up in the wheelhouse. Clio put in her earphones and tried to brighten her own mood, but it was useless. Her brain was still churning over the conversation of the night before. She knew the
what
now, but the
why
still wasn’t clear. Why the big secret mission for an old rock? Why couldn’t anyone know about it? How had Julia gotten the letter?

Clio was in the middle of considering these questions and reheating the strew for lunch when there was a clang, a grinding noise, and the unmistakable sound of water going somewhere that it wasn’t supposed to. She looked out in the hall to see soap foam spitting out of the
Butterfly
’s compact washer-dryer.

She picked up her com slowly.

“This is Number Five,” she said into it. “The washing machine just mutinied. I think we’re about to get kind of wet.”

Whatever their plans were for the rest of the afternoon were quickly dropped. The water supply had to be shut down to stop the flow of water, which had gotten foam all through the hall and slightly into the dining room, making the carpet squish.

Her father was getting short-tempered, snapping at the machine and throwing down parts in disgust. Aidan handled it very calmly, sending him up to the wheelhouse and taking over.

It was actually kind of impressive, watching Aidan sit on the wet carpet, taking apart the machine. He actually seemed to have some idea of what he was doing.

“How do you know what to do?” Clio asked.

“It’s just a washing machine,” he said. “It’s not that complicated.”