Run Afoul (20 page)

They had walked out onto the beach, and Wiki came to a stop, studying the scene with his hands propped on his hips and his eyes narrowed against the glare. The cutter was about fifty feet off. He saw one of the oarsmen wave, and the boat started on the way to shore. Then he said, “And what puzzles me, too, is that Dr. Tweedie was so surprisingly calm and collected.”

Forsythe said dismissively, “He's always like that.”

“But he made no attempt to explain how the mix-up happened.”

“He didn't need to—the boy put the mortar in the wrong place, that's all. You saw how the shelves are labeled. Tweedie looked at the label, and assumed that the mortar he picked up was the right one.”

Dr. Gilchrist's words—
“This man has been poisoned!”
—rang through Wiki's mind. Had Dr. Tweedie confessed in order to spare his son from a charge of misadventure leading to manslaughter—to save him from prison, perhaps? Maybe there had been more than his reputation as an apothecary at stake.

The boy had denied putting the mortar away, Wiki remembered. He said, “Did you see Dr. Tweedie look at the label before he picked up the mortar?”

“I didn't pay all that much attention,” Forsythe said, rather defensively. “That bloody woman was blathering on, and Dr. Olliver aidin' and abettin' by urging her on with questions.”

“So, what
did
you see?”

“I saw Tweedie doing exactly what he usually does,” Forsythe snapped. “He took down the jars and set them up in a row on the workbench, picked up the mortar from the shelf, and ground up the ingredients. Then he poured the powder into a beaker of liquid, stirred it around, poured it into a bottle, shook the bottle a few times, and handed it over.”

“You told me that he had his back to you. There could have been something you missed.”

“If you're thinkin' that someone leaned over and switched the mortars, then you should shove that little idea right out of your head. You saw the setup yourself—to get to the other side of that counter a man would have to go out of the store and round the outside to the other door, at the back. It's too wide to reach across and touch any goddamned thing.”

Wiki stared out to sea, narrowing his eyes against the bright sun bouncing off the water. Logic said that the southerner had to be right, because the counter was indeed too wide for anyone to lean across and exchange the mortars, certainly without the rest of them noticing. The only people who had known that the strychnine had been ground up earlier were the woman, the boy, and Tweedie himself—and why would anyone switch the mortars in the farfetched hope that the contaminated medicine would poison Grimes? Back in the Bay of Islands, Wiki's people had a saying:
Ko nga take whawhai, he whenua, he wahine
—for the source of trouble, look for property and women, but Grimes had had neither of those. While the thin, gray-faced man had been unpleasant, he had been harmless enough. No one who knew him had a motive to kill him, particularly in such a complicated, hit-and-miss fashion, and Tweedie, his son, and Mrs. Dixon had never even met the man!

Then the boat arrived, and both men waded into the sea. As Wiki steered the craft just offshore of the Praia de Santa Luzia, past the gardens, the lakes, the great peaks, and the craggy hills, he didn't take in any of the magnificent view, however. Instead, he was going over the interview with Dr. Tweedie, and battling with the niggling thought that there had been something else he should have asked. Try as he might, he couldn't put a finger on it.

Then, as they rounded Calabuça Point, and the city came into view, he felt Forsythe nudge his shoulder. “There's that French filly what snared your fancy,” the lieutenant said.

Wiki looked around, and saw one of the felucca-rigged craft close by. This specimen was a pleasure boat, a large, smart affair that was undoubtedly the toy of someone very rich. She was dashing along on the breast of the breeze under her long, triangular sails, with a dozen husky black men standing at the massive oars. Under a striped canvas awning four or five gentlemen were relaxed in padded seats, chatting with a couple of women. Wiki recognized Sir Patrick Palgrave, but the Englishman's face was turned away as he talked to a man who sat deep in the shadows of the awning, and so he didn't see the cutter.

One of the women, as Forsythe had said, was Madame de Roquefeuille. She was seated on the side nearest to the cutter, and this time, because she was not swathed in a cloak, Wiki could see that she was very slender. Her silk taffeta gown was a haunting shade of gray-blue, like dawn light on the sea, and the sun glittered on the many jewels she wore. Bracelets extended all the way up her white forearms, and the hand lying languidly on the gunwale was heavy with rings. The bodice of her dress was low-cut and very tight, pushing out the upper swell of her breasts. Her head was uncovered, and her rich copper hair was drawn up from a center parting, and braided into a thick chignon high on her long slender neck. There were flowers pinned into her hair.

Despite the awning she was holding a parasol, so was sitting in a double shadow, but still Wiki could distinctly see her eyes as her contemplative gaze passed over his face, focused briefly, and passed on without expression. Then the other boat had gone. For the first time, Wiki realized that it had come from the direction of Enxados Island, where the expedition fleet was based. Now, he wondered where the
fallua
was going.

Forsythe said, “One of 'em must've been her husband.”

“Aye,” said Wiki, feeling depressed. Then he put his attention to steering the cutter to the shipyard.

As they arrived alongside the
Swallow,
Midshipman Keith came out onto the bow, cupped his hands about his mouth, and hollered that Captain Wilkes wanted to see Lieutenant Forsythe and Mr. Coffin
instantum.

“Why?” shouted Wiki.

The young man lifted skinny shoulders in a shrug.

“Where, then?”

“In the observation chamber at the convent.”

Five minutes later, the cutter touched the boat stairs of Enxados Island. As he and Forsythe clambered out, Wiki contemplated the convent. It was an odd edifice, he thought, being such a strange mixture of building styles. Its flat, two-storied face was interrupted with two rows of rectangular windows in the local fashion, but it was also embellished with a round turret in the medieval style, with a pointed roof. The large portico boasted an arched Gothic doorway, four arrow-slit windows on two levels, a stone balcony, and Dutch gables. To its left-hand side was a large barnlike building with equally oddly assorted corner bastions.

Wiki had not a notion what the barn had been employed for in the past, but right now it was used as a barracks for the marines. The sailors who had come off the
Vincennes
were housed in rows of tents which were smartly set out in military squares on the flat top of the hilly meadow above and behind the convent. Lines of trees and thickets of scrub served as windbreaks, along with cairns of rocks.

The effect was surprisingly rustic, considering that the bustling port of Rio de Janeiro was so close by. However, there was plenty of activity in progress, with many carpentering gangs marching to and fro with their tools and timber. Portable huts that had been carried in the holds of the
Vincennes
were being set up, and instruments—barometers, diurnal variation machines, and thermometers—were being fixed in their stands, both in the shelter of the huts and out in the steaming sun.

The marine on sentry duty at the boat stairs directed them along the shoreside path to the portico, where they paused in the deep shadow for their sight to adjust after the bright light outside. Forsythe had shouldered his rifle, and his meaty left hand fidgeted with the stock as he stared through the inner gateway to the sunbaked expanse of the courtyard beyond. “Where the hell is the observation chamber?” he demanded.

“Who knows,” said Wiki. The courtyard was bounded by a bewilderment of columns, walls, corridors, stone rooms, and steep, winding flights of stairs. Then, he heard the echoes of voices, and led the way across the cracked flagstones and through the cloisters on the far side, toward the noise.

They arrived in a large stone chamber, which was so crowded that it immediately became apparent that all the officers of the
Porpoise
and
Vincennes
had been summoned there for a lecture. Most were huddled in a large knot, with just a few more independent souls standing somewhat apart. They were all gazing with various degrees of bafflement at a very long pendulum, which was suspended from a high tripod that had been set up at the far end of the long room. It wasn't moving, but was frozen instead at the fullest extent of its swing, which looked odd, as if time itself had abruptly stopped. Then Wiki spied the thin string that had been tied just above the bob, which led to a hook in a side wall, and kept the pendulum at its highest point.

Directly behind the tripod, a tall case clock had been lashed up against the back wall, its door clipped open to expose its much smaller movement. While this wall had no windows to interrupt its white-plastered stonework, long casements in the walls to either side let in plenty of light, so both the pendulum and clock could be seen clearly. A telescope had been set up at the nearest end of the long room, close to the archway where Wiki and Forsythe stood, positioned at the right height for a man to peer into the eyepiece. Its nose pointed at the case clock. The sun reflected obliquely off brass.

Captain Wilkes was standing alongside the tripod, a lit candle in his hand, and his large, intelligent eyes glowing with enthusiasm. “As you all know,” he was saying as Wiki and Forsythe arrived, “Isaac Newton's theory of gravitation explains the motion of terrestrial objects and celestial bodies by assuming that there is a mutual attraction between all pairs of massive objects proportional to the product of the two masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This, according to his Law of Gravitation, can be summed up in an equation—one which I am certain you are all fully familiar with already.”

“F = Gm
1
m
2
/r
2
, sir,” piped up a junior midshipman, while his peers turned and surveyed him with open astonishment and veiled disgust.

“Well done, Mr. Fisher! However, the element G of that equation is the least well-measured constant in nature,” Captain Wilkes declared. “Isaac Newton himself concluded that it is impossible to obtain it with any accuracy, because the gravitational attraction between any pair of objects that we can sensibly measure is so weak.
We,
gentlemen, are here to prove him wrong. Before we leave,
we
are going to quantify the constant G.
We,
gentlemen,” he dramatically pronounced, “are going to weigh the earth.”

Dead silence. The senior officers cast uneasy glances at each other, while all the midshipmen, save the young genius, Fisher, looked completely bewildered. Wiki, on the other hand, was extremely impressed. Standing in the archway with his arms folded, he had trouble to stop himself from shaking his head in admiration. While scientifics like Dr. Olliver and Captain Couthouy might despise Captain Wilkes for his carping approach to the collection and storage of specimens, and while the midshipmen, who had unstintingly worshipped him at the start of the voyage, might be expressing dismay at his increasing attacks of hysteria, Wiki himself held great respect for the man.

Because of his background in whaleships, Wiki was acutely aware of the stresses that afflicted the commander of the expedition. Being responsible for just one vessel was a great strain on any conscientious captain, yet Wilkes was in charge of
seven
of them, all with different sailing characteristics, and in varying states of repair. Most of the time, he did not even have them all in sight! Too, his job was far beyond the usual one of getting a ship from one port to another as quickly and safely as possible. Not only did he have to get this sevenfold fleet along a highly ambitious track about the world, but he had to satisfy the demands of a scientific corps who, apart from Captain Couthouy, had no idea what the job of a shipmaster involved. And yet, Captain Wilkes had time for a complicated experiment that sounded as if it could be a revolutionary forward step. Weigh the world with a pendulum, a clock, and a telescope? Incredible—amazing!

Then Wiki was distracted. A chink, right at the bottom of the wall behind the clock, suddenly opened up, letting in light. He wondered what had happened, and then saw a big rat run along the skirting. The hole led outside, he realized, and the rat had finally come through it after sitting there and blocking the light for a while. Some of the ship's rats must have come ashore with the provisions—dozens of them, he mused, as the light was momentarily obscured again and two more rats wriggled through the hole into the room. When Wiki glanced at Forsythe he saw that he was watching the rats, too, and that his hands had shifted their grip on his gun.
Don't shoot,
he prayed.

His prayer was answered. Just as the glint of light was blocked again—and stayed blocked, the animal in the hole choosing to stay there instead of coming into the chamber—Lawrence J. Smith stepped forward, and Forsythe's stare shifted to his despised fellow officer.

“Perhaps it would clarify the issue if we all repeated Cavendish's classical experiment,” Lieutenant Smith suggested, while the expressions of all those about him turned from open perplexity to muted loathing.

“Excellent idea!” returned Captain Wilkes. “The Cavendish gravitational torsion balance that I use for experiments is stored in one of the tents, I think. If you'd be kind enough to locate it and take charge of the project, Lieutenant Smith? You could start with the most senior officers, and then
graduate
to the junior midshipmen.”