Run Afoul (34 page)

Lieutenant Forsythe was not invited. He didn't seem to mind, tipping Wiki an ironic salute as they left the courthouse, and agreeing to meet him at the boat stairs, where the cutter and crew were waiting. Wiki thought that it was unlikely he would honor the promise, as without a doubt he would head off to some taberna, but there were plenty of expedition boats going back and forth between the city and the fleet.

Wine and
tira-gosto
were served by the flurried-looking restaurateur, and everyone partook freely, though it was noteworthy that the quality of the food was not even close to the standard of the fare Festin had conjured up for Sir Patrick's banquet. Captain Coffin was the center of much congratulatory attention, while Wiki was cajoled into producing his letter of authority. As he watched, it was handed around the table in a babble of flattering comment, while the readers glanced up at him with obvious respect. Even if they couldn't comprehend the flowing English script, the seal, ribbon, and flourishing signatures were evidence enough of its importance.

Then, just as Sir Patrick returned it, commenting that though his father had told him about Wiki's being deputized, he'd had no idea it was such a formal appointment, Manuela Josefa Ramalho Vieira de Castro de Roquefeuille arrived with her sister. “Is Captain Coffin still in jail?” she cried, and then, when she glimpsed Wiki's father, clapped her hands and cried,
“Maravilhoso!”

Then, as she and her sister were cermoniously placed at the round table, she demanded to know the details, and the grandees competed to tell her, while Wiki watched expressions chase each other across her pretty face. She was wearing blue, a color with vivid connotations for him.

“To the escape!” she cried at the end, lifting her glass and smiling at him across the rim. She was seated on the opposite side of the round table, while Wiki sat at Sir Patrick's right hand. His father was seated at Lady Palgrave's right hand, so was on the far side of the table, too, with Josefa at his other elbow.

Then Josefa mused aloud, “The coincidence of names was very lucky, was it not?”—and Wiki held his breath. When Dr. Olliver had cried out the name William, Josefa had been at the back of the reception room, but still she must have seen Dr. Olliver's unseeing look, and the blank, suffering eyes. To Wiki's relief, however, she silenced, simply looking very thoughtful.

“The coincidence might have tipped the issue,” Senhor de Silveira argued in knowledgeable tones. “But it still must be recognized that there was not much of a case to start with. Finding Captain Coffin holding the murder weapon was not at all conclusive, and the name William is a common one. Surely the man who brought about his arrest was a fool.”

“As Captain Couthouy said, it must have been a cimarron,” said Senhor da Silva wisely. “They are desperate men, those runaways. The rebels recruit them, you know.”

“An unplanned crime, obviously,” agreed Senhor de Silveira. “He blundered across Dr. Olliver, lashed out in a panic, threw the cudgel down, and ran away.”

Wiki remembered how Sir Patrick Palgrave had galloped headlong out of the jungle, and full-tilt into the outdoor pool before he had dragged his steed to a halt. He turned to him and said, “Did you see anyone running away when you came down the track?”

His host lifted his shoulders in a rueful shrug. “I was in too much of a hurry to see much at all. To tell the truth, I had completely forgotten that I was supposed to be at the plantation to greet the party—I had lost all track of time. I sailed to Rio Macae, but was told the survey party had just left. So I took a horse, hoping to overtake them before they arrived at the fazenda.”

“It was a dramatic entrance,” Wiki commented.

“Aye, but definitely overdue,” said Sir Patrick, with chagrin in his squirrellike face. “I should have been there the day before—then I could have greeted you, too.” He paused, and though he smiled, the protruberant brown eyes were cold with dislike. “My sister-in-law looked after you well?”

When Wiki glanced at Josefa, she was watching him, her expression grave, for once. “As always in Brazil, the hospitality was impeccable,” he said lightly.

The grandees who had hosted the scientific party clapped with pleasure at the compliment. Then a man who lived locally said, “Tell us about the latest antics of this exploring expedition.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Wiki, puzzled.

“The big ship
Peacock
and the little schooners
Flying Fish
and
Sea Gull
have been behaving incomprehensibly.”

“Why, what have they been doing?”

Several men competed to tell him, but he gradually gathered that all three were anchored in the outer harbor, and were engaged in firing guns at each other.

“An exercise?” he hazarded.

“Perhaps,” someone agreed judiciously. However, each ship was firing four guns in turn, and so perhaps exercising the guns was not a good reason.

“It must be a survey,” Wiki decided. “The bangs and flashes would give them the means to measure something, perhaps.”

“But measure what?” Sr. de Silveira queried.

“Something astronomical, I suppose.”

“But is this not the same expedition that refused to fire a salute to our national flag, on the grounds of the
fragilidade
of the chronometers?”

Wiki winced, and spread his hands to indicate that the strange lack of diplomacy was incomprehensible to him, too.

“This is a
most
strange expedition,” Senhor de Silveira said.

“It is indeed,” Wiki fervently agreed, watching a casserole of the famous
feijoada
arrive. Silence fell as plates were filled, and he said on a note of whimsy, in an effort to lighten the mood, “But what can one expect when it is founded on a crackpot theory?”

“Crackpot?” Josefa echoed.

“That the earth is hollow, and that habitable land, with jungles and meadows—and coffee plantations, undoubtedly—can be discovered in the center of the globe.”

This had the desired effect of amusing the company greatly, so that a patter of lively questions followed. At the end, Josefa said, “It sounds as if one could find a most desirable country retreat in such a place—but how does one get there?”

“By sailing to the poles,” Wiki told her. “Where, according to the theory, there are holes that lead to the interior.”

“And that is what your expedition hopes to find—a hole in the South Pole, which will lead perhaps to this paradise?” asked Senhor da Silva.

Wiki laughed, and said, “Not at all. No one believes in that crackpot theory now, but it gave birth to the idea of a discovery expedition.”

Josefa confided, “Sir Patrick's grandfather was a crackpot, too. He believed the sun was habitable.”

Everyone looked at her attentively. The grandees were smiling, but the hairs on the nape of Wiki's neck were rising in an icy chill.

Sir Patrick drank wine, and said, “Josefa, we don't want to hear that.”

“But it was so amusing—and it is so like this story of the inside of the earth being warm and friendly and a good place to live. You told me your crackpot grandfather declared that the sun is a temperate planet, and that if only we could get there we would live quite comfortably! That's what Sir Patrick told us—isn't that right, Ramona?” she said, and looked at her sister, who nodded.

“Meu Deus,”
said someone. “Truly, Sir Patrick?”

Sir Patrick smiled, and said he hoped it wasn't the kind of craziness that was handed down from father to son, and they all laughed and agreed, while all the time Wiki sat utterly frozen, terribly afraid that he had betrayed himself in the first moment of shocked realization, and desperately trying to hide the fact that he now knew who had bludgeoned Dr. Olliver to death, and why Dr. Olliver had poisoned Astronomer Grimes.
“I killed for him,”
he'd whispered with his dying breath, and at long last Wiki understood.

No wonder Sir Patrick had invited him to the banquet at Praia Grande! He had learned from his friend, Captain Coffin, that his son was an agent of the law. That was why he'd spun that long, convincing story about his childhood memories of Grimes—based on what Dr. Olliver had told him. When Wiki had first met this man who called himself Sir Patrick Palgrave—in this very room, and at this same table!—he had simply referred to Grimes as “the poor man who was poisoned.”
Dear God, how did I miss the contradiction?

And how did I miss that Dr. Olliver and the so-called Sir Patrick Palgrave were brothers?
Wiki's thought was bleak with chagrin. He, of all people, should have picked up on their relationship—he'd come so close, that night at Praia Grande when he had been amused by a certain sameness of stance and attitude, and yet it had taken Josefa's little story, and the realization that the two men had the same grandfather, to trigger it.

It took a physical effort to stay in his seat and pretend to hold a normal conversation, but at long, long last the closing toast was given, Captain Coffin was congratulated for the final time, and the guests began to take their leave. Wiki shook hands with everyone, smiling mechanically as he received still more encomiums, and then made his way down the curving stone stairway to the marbled hall, forcing himself not to hurry.

There was a carriage drawn up outside the portico—the same carriage that had brought Josefa here the first time, only this time it was standing in the afternoon sun, and Wiki could see that it was drawn not by horses, but by smart little mules. A patter of feet sounded from behind him. Josefa, her expression anxious. He wondered how much she had guessed.

“You are fine?” she queried in her soft, breathless voice.

Instead of answering, he said, “Can I kiss you good-bye?”

“Fie, you cannot. You would ruin my reputation.” She smiled, but a warning was there in her eyes. After looking around to make sure no one was watching, she said, “I have a gift for you to remember me by,” and pressed something hard and small into his hand. Then she said, “It's your important color—green. It will bring you luck, and keep you safe.”

Before he could say anything more she was inside the carriage, with a swish of blue silk and a last glimpse of slender ankles. The coachman flicked the reins, and then Manuela Josefa Ramalho Vieira de Castro de Roquefeuille was gone.

*   *   *

The others had not come down the stairway. Wiki grabbed the chance to get away unnoticed, hurrying across the square and breaking into a run once he was around the corner. He had not a notion of where the office of the local Seamen's Bethel might be, but had seen the distinctive blue and white Bethel flag flying from a beached hulk near the boat stairs, with a gangplank that led from the shore to the deck. The wreck probably just housed a reading room for sailors who preferred books to carousing, but the librarian would know the address of the office on shore. And there, Wiki knew he had a good chance of locating the information he so desperately needed, because part of the mission of the Seamen's Bethel was to look after shipwrecked or marooned seamen, and keep records of their deaths. His father had said that he had gone to the office here to report the loss of the
Pagoda
and the rescue of one man, the passenger, and so their files should have the details—including a crew list.

Forsythe's cutter was moored at the steps, but there was no sign of the lieutenant. The boat's crew grinned resignedly when they saw Wiki, and then went on with smoking their pipes and contemplating the passing view. Wiki carried on up the gangplank of the hulk that flew the Bethel flag, ducking to avoid a beam as he clattered down the companionway. A smell of bilge and old books rose to meet him. At the bottom he found the reading room, and a clerk who told him where to find the office on shore—off Rua Mata Cavalo, a frustratingly long distance away.

It was still siesta, but Wiki's timing was good, because an ancient sacristan opened the door just as he arrived. The old clerk was yawning, but became politely attentive once he saw Wiki's certificate from the sheriff's department in Virginia. As Dr. Vieira de Castro had promised, it carried more authority in this foreign port than Wiki had ever dared hope or expect.

Files labeled
P
were hauled out, and after a short discussion about the date of the wreck, a box with the label
PAGODA
was produced. Inside were copies of the letters that had been sent to the families of the men who had died, plus a few sad little acknowledgments. Right at the bottom was the crew list the Bethel had received from Montevideo.

Wiki grabbed it eagerly. The name of the dead captain of the
Pagoda
was unfamiliar, but the next name on the list jumped out of the page.

William Olliver, first officer.

Twenty-six

“We've had two callers, both asking for you,” Midshipman Keith informed Wiki after he finally arrived on board the brig
Swallow.

Wiki looked at him distractedly. Forsythe had still not been with the cutter when he had got back to the boat stairs from the Bethel office, and so he'd had to wait until he found a ride with another of the expedition boats, making him so late that the abrupt equatorial night had fallen while he was still out on the harbor.

He asked, “Where is Captain Rochester?”

“With Captain Hudson, on the
Peacock.
They've been making a triangulation survey at the mouth of the harbor, with the lighthouse as a central point, and tomorrow they are to commence making another survey off Enxados Island, with the observatory as the focus. They've decided to release the crew of the
Flying Fish
for the day, and so we'll be taking over.”

It was terribly scientific and quite meaningless. No doubt it was the mysterious exercise the grandees had discussed. Wiki looked about the dark deck, and said, “Callers?”