A Watery Grave (29 page)

The others who had left the saloon had dispersed, and so Rochester stood alone in the shadow of the mainmast, sunk in churning thoughts. The deck was very quiet, the men who were on watch having taken their positions at lookout, and the others all below at rest. There was no moon, but the bright stars turned the black surface of the sea into shimmering satin. Above him, the sails bulked shapeless in the night.

He heard quick footsteps coming from behind.
Midshipman Keith,
Rochester thought, and turned quickly—not in time to evade the blow completely, but enough to avoid the full force of the cudgel on his head. Because of that, it did not kill him. Instead, the world swung sickly with the jolt of awful pain, and then he fell senseless to the planks.

Twenty-four

In the morning, Lieutenant Smith had still not returned, with or without George Rochester. Wiki had been on deck since dawn, when the watch on the
Swallow
had been roused up to wash the decks. On the other ships the same routine was being followed, the echoes of whistles and shouts drifting over the expanse of glittering water where the small fleet was laying serenely aback. However, there was no sign of a boat putting out from the
Vincennes.
Wiki paced back and forth, feeling deeply worried. He had entrusted Lieutenant Smith with the copy of the report to the sheriff, asking him to give it to George Rochester to read, add any extra information that he might have gained in the meantime, and then hand on to Captain Wilkes at the first good opportunity. Now he wondered if his faith had been misplaced.

Below decks, the saloon was empty, so Wiki breakfasted alone. Forsythe had seized Smith's absence as an opportunity to get roaring drunk and was still sleeping off the binge. After drinking two mugs of the steward's excellent coffee Wiki went into his stateroom, shut the door, and sat on the edge of the berth in his thinking position, forearms on thighs, hands loosely linked between his knees, scowling down at his feet.

The more he thought about the flash of fear he had glimpsed in Jim Powell's eyes, the more sure he became that the seaman had been murdered. There was reason enough for it, particularly if that was not the first time Powell had let slip that he'd opened the note before he delivered it. So, Wiki wondered, if the crowd had not suddenly arrived in the doorway, what would Powell have said? Would he have confirmed what Tristram Stanton had told the sheriff—that it was a message to his wife that made it brutally clear that he was determined to sail? At the time the ultimatum had seemed to provide a plausible reason for suicide, so did the fact that Ophelia Stanton had
not
killed herself make his story less convincing?

It did seem an odd kind of message for a man to write in the middle of a banquet, Wiki mused now. Surely, if Stanton had been as exhilarated and ebullient as George had described, he would not have been in the mood to be so deliberately cruel. The astronomer had certainly scribbled something, though, so what else could it have been? Wiki abruptly thought that maybe Jim had still tried to let him know what he had read, but in a crafty fashion. While the sick-bay attendants had been carrying him away, the seaman had been drunkenly crooning a little song—
All's well, all's well
—which was the same as the last line of Burroughs's ode to happiness. Was Powell's burbling as drunken and meaningless as he had thought at the time, or could something be read into the coincidence?

Grimes had claimed he had found the poem discarded in some astronomical equipment. Presumably it had been dropped while Burroughs was working on his observations. Surely, Wiki mused, there was no connection between the poem and the message, and Powell had been merely maudlin with his grog—but still he hunkered down to haul out the boxes Stanton had left stacked beneath the berth when he'd moved over to the
Vincennes.
They were alongside his sea chest, but hadn't inconvenienced him, so Wiki had paid them scant attention before this. Now he heaved out the wooden cases with a growing sense of excitement, thinking that maybe, most ironically, the last clue to the mystery of Ophelia Stanton's murder had been stowed under his bed all the time.

But the boxes held nothing but racks of lenses, telescoping spyglasses, and other instruments. Obviously, Stanton had left them behind in reserve because they weren't currently needed. There were no papers at all, let alone anything significant. The disappointment bit unexpectedly keenly. Wiki kicked the boxes back into place, threw himself onto the berth, and stared at the back panel of the locker balefully.

The morning sun glinted on the scratches in the brass screws where someone had worked them loose in the recent past. Why? In order to replace the panel? Stanton had slept in this room while the
Swallow
was on passage to join the fleet, so there was a good chance he had broken the panel one night. Tristram Stanton was a big, heavy man, a couple of inches taller than Wiki himself, and so would have been even more irritated that the locker intruded so on the length of the berth. It was easy enough to imagine him giving the panel such a hefty kick that it needed replacing. On yet another impulse, Wiki got up, heaved the mattress aside, and set to work on the screws.

It didn't take long at all. Within a couple of minutes all the fastenings were free, and the panel was held only by its tight fit in the frame. Levering with his sheath knife, Wiki pried it loose, to reveal the backs of shelves that were piled deep with folded flags—and a long box that had been wedged into a space created by shoving the shelves a few inches forward. Wiki tested the weight of the case by lifting it a couple of inches, and then braced himself and heaved it out. Then he laid it down on the bottom boards of his berth.

The long box was locked but easily broken open. Wiki inserted his knife into the gap between the bottom and the lid and levered hard. With a loud crack and some splintering the lid swung open, to reveal a fully equipped gun case, expensively lined in velvet. A matched pair of fine rifles rested in padded grooves, along with all the usual appurtenances, such as powder horns, brass cappers, and so forth, all in their own special niches. For a long moment Wiki stood there staring, feeling numb, the hairs on his neck lifting and ruffling in a long shiver. Find the rifle and you find the killer, the sheriff had said with great confidence—and here on the brig
Swallow,
in the midst of the Atlantic, was the gun he sought.

Carefully Wiki picked up one of the rifles, running his hand over the beautifully crafted stock and then lifting it to his shoulder to squint down the smooth double barrel. The two were an exact pair, so Wiki had not a notion if he was holding the same gun the sheriff had so reverently hefted in Tristram Stanton's study or the one that had been hidden on the riverbank after the attempt to sink the boat. It made no difference. Without a doubt, these were Tristram Stanton's guns, and it was Tristram Stanton who had hidden them here.

Wiki heard a grunt and then a curse in the saloon as a chair was knocked over. Swiftly, he returned the rifle to the case. Then, without bothering to put things back the way they had been, he opened the stateroom door.

Forsythe, having picked up the chair, was slumped into it and had his hands wrapped round a mug of coffee. He looked, Wiki meditated, like the last three days of a misspent life. The eyes he briefly lifted were bloodshot and yellow, and he smelled vile too, of old sweat and a foul stomach.

Wiki sat down, reached out for the coffeepot and his mug, and said abruptly, “I have to get over to the
Vin.
”

Forsythe grunted, “Well, you can't.”

“Why not?”

“As you might've noticed, Mr. Deputy Coffin, we're a two-boat ship—as you
whalemen
call it—and one of the boats was taken off by Lieutenant Smith, who has not seen fit to return. I refuse to be left with no goddamn boat, so you can't go until he gets back.”

Wiki thought that made a lot more sense than many of Forsythe's decisions. However, it seemed that the southerner was curious despite himself, because he demanded, “What the hell d'you want to go there for anyway?”

“I need to see George Rochester first and then Captain Wilkes.”

Forsythe paused and then jibed, “And I don't suppose you're going to condescend to tell me why.”

“I asked George to try and find out what Jim Powell got up to after he was taken to the sick bay.”

“Why, for God's sake?”

“Because I believe he's dead.”

“Because he lost the number of his mess?”

“Aye.” Wiki lifted an eyebrow at the unexpected shrewdness.

“And you want to know how it happened.”

“Exactly.”

“And, no doubt,” Forsythe said sarcastically, “you reckon he's been murdered.”

Wiki kept his tone neutral. “No one has reported finding a corpse—not yet.”

“Well, for once you can't blame me for whatever foul crime you're brewing up in that glob you call a mind. I haven't clapped eyes on the little bastard since you carried him down from the maintop.”

Wiki didn't bother to hide the contempt in his silent stare.

“So who d'you reckon murdered him, then?”

Without even knowing he was going to say it, Wiki said, “Tristram Stanton.”

And his instinctive answer was right, he suddenly realized, because of something that had been unconsciously nagging him all along—that, while it had been Forsythe's name Powell had given, it had been Tristram Stanton, not Forsythe, who had arrived in the doorway with the rest of the crowd. It was the sight of the astronomer that had triggered the flash of mortal fear in Powell's expression. Jim had swiftly changed the name he was on the verge of revealing, but for him it had been too late.

“Stanton killed Jim Powell?” Forsythe seemed more entertained than surprised. “Why the hell would he want to remove a lying little swab like Jim Powell from the face of the earth?”

Because he knew too much,
thought Wiki,
and could not be relied upon to tell glib lies the whole of the time.
Also, Jim had boasted about reading the note—the note that Stanton had scribbled at the banquet table and supposedly sent to his wife.

Instead of answering, however, Wiki took a long swallow of coffee. Then he observed, “You were wrong about your cousin turning a deaf ear to your talk of divorce.”

“And what makes you so sure of that?”

“As long as her husband was around, she had some reason to threaten to do away with herself. Once he had sailed away, talking suicide wasn't going to bring him back. She would've divorced him just for revenge, probably—not because it was the sensible option you recommended.”

“The poor bitch was never sensible,” Forsythe said moodily. He was staring down at his breakfast plate, which held congealed baked beans, untouched.

“Suicide would have suited the Stantons first rate, but they couldn't rely on it, and so killing her was the only safe way out. There was too big a chance she'd go to a magistrate and start proceedings after Tristram Stanton had sailed.”

Forsythe lifted his head, his expression brooding. “Wa-al, if that was the motive for murdering her, it surely lets me off the hook—and puts Tristram Stanton fairsquare in the dock. So how do you reckon he did it?”

Wiki shook his head. “He was at Newport News, remember.”

“So who did it, then?”

“The old man—Tristram Stanton's father.”

“The old bastard?” Again, Forsythe betrayed no surprise.

“Aye. He was the one with both motive and opportunity—he and Ophelia dined alone together that night. Sometime during the meal he slipped opium into her food or drink—or possibly he foxed her that he was giving her some ordinary medicine; something like that. That was why she didn't make a fuss when someone came into her bedroom to take her body away. By eleven, she would have been deeply unconscious, on the verge of dying, probably. An empty pill bottle was tucked into her bosom to make it look like she'd done it herself, but it was the old man who poisoned her, I'm certain of it. The whole point of taking the body away and disposing of it in that elaborate fashion was to divert suspicion from him.”

“Jesus,” said Forsythe. He squinted his eyes in thought and then nodded. “Figures,” he said. “And you put this in the report to the sheriff?”

“I did.”

The southerner let out a grunt of mirth. “Sure would like to be a fly on the wall when he issues the warrant,” he commented. “So what about the man who came to her bedroom?”

That was the crux of the matter. There were several good reasons to think that it had been Forsythe himself, Wiki mediated.

He said softly, “How did you pay your mess bill, Lieutenant?”

“It's
Captain
to you,” Forsythe snapped without a pause. “And paying my mess bill had
nothin'
to do with Ophelia.”

Then to Wiki's great surprise he barked with laughter, slapping his thigh and saying, “It's too good a joke not to share—it was Tristram Stanton himself who donated the necessary to pay off my accounts.”

“What?”

“Not that he knew about it,” Forsythe confessed, with a reminiscent grin.

“So what happened?”

“I was mindin' me own business on the wharf at Portsmouth when Astronomer Burroughs toddled along totin' a parcel. He had the confounded sauce to instruct me to deliver it to Stanton, and while I was learnin' him that lieutenants are not to be ordered around like common little swabs of junior mids, who should arrive but Tristram Stanton himself. I told him to take his own bloody parcel, and he told me to keep it. So I did.”

“And there was money inside it?”

“Not to first appearances. It was a suit of clothes—a good suit, fine black broadcloth coat, white vest, shirt, stock, good black breeches. The best surprise, though, was what one of the pockets held—a draft for a thousand dollars, to be cashed by the bearer, and signed by Astronomer Burroughs himself.”