Shark Island (30 page)

“So are you going to tell us what you're searching for now?”

George Rochester said, “Lieutenant Forsythe's knife was stolen.”

“For God's sake!” Hammond exploded, and whirled round on Wiki, recognizing his presence at last. “You can't mean you gave him back the same goddamned knife I hauled out of Captain Reed's corpse? What kind of goddamned sheriff's deputy do you think you are? You tamely handed the murder weapon back to the killer!”

Forsythe had gone white, a bleached shade of fury which was almost instantly overtaken by a flood of red. He roared, “That's a lie!”

“Aye? When the captain's widow herself swears that she saw you on the quarterdeck? And when it was
your
goddamned knife I found in her husband's body?”

“It was
not
my bloody knife! She's lying—and so are you, goddamn it!”

“You were there when I handed it over, so you saw the stains of blood.” Hammond's mouth pursed righteously, and he said, “That's God's evidence, so far as I'm concerned.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake!” Forsythe exclaimed. His fists were clenched, but to Wiki's relief, instead of attacking Hammond he barged furiously out of the tent.

He had moved so fast that he was out of sight by the time Wiki and Rochester emerged, so instead of going after him they stopped and looked around. Piles of goods littered the strand in every direction. The knife could be anywhere, Wiki thought, and was washed by a wave of depression.

“In another few days,” he said moodily, “the
Annawan
will be fixed, and our reprieve will be over. Joel Hammond will insist on sailing away to look for his treasure; you'll be forced to take that sealing gang on board; and I'll have got no further in finding the killer.” And it was partly Rochester's fault, by banning him from leaving the brig, he thought, but did not say it. Instead, he added wryly, “We have to face it, George, I'd make a better horse jockey than a sleuth.”

“Cheer up,” Rochester urged. “We might have to take eight on board—but it's not nearly so bad as the prospect of being lumbered with the
Annawan
people all the way to Rio. Seventeen men! Where the devil would we have put them all?” he rhetorically demanded.

Wiki cast him a sideways glance and then returned to his dark study of the beach. People were working on the
Annawan
already, though the boat with the breakfast was still returning from the brig accompanied by the two boats that belonged to the
Swallow,
both full of men. In the distance the
Flying Fish
floated on her dappled reflection, with no sign of life on board. Lieutenant Smith, he noticed, hadn't offered any of his men to help with the repairs.

He said, “Sixteen.”

“What?”

“That's the number of men on the
Annawan.
”

George shook his head. “Seventeen.”

“You're counting Annabelle.”

“No I'm not.”

Wiki frowned. He had his notebook in his pocket, and now fetched it out. By sheer coincidence it fell open at the page where he had copied the crew list, and he read it again now, counting down the column. “Hammond, the cook, the steward, the first mate, the bo'sun and the bo'sun's mate, Folger's five sealers, and five more seamen add up to a total of sixteen.”

“Have it your own way—but I
can
count, you know.”

George sounded unusually irritated. Wiki paused, looking at his notebook as uneasiness riffled the short hairs on his neck. He said uncertainly, “But the list—”

“As I said, have it your own way!”

“
E hoa,
no.” Wiki shook his head, beset by an indefinable sense of oncoming crisis. “You must have a good reason to be so definite—so when did you do this counting?”

“That first day on the
Annawan,
the afternoon Reed was murdered. I came on board, and counted sixteen hands as Hammond sent them about their duty. It's something instinctive, in a captain. Then you came on deck with the seventeenth man.”

“What?”

Wiki remembered it vividly. He had been in the hold, and had come out into the bright sunshine to see Rochester on the quarterdeck talking with Joel Hammond. He remembered how glad he had been to see him. He looked down at the list again, not counting this time, but reading the names he had copied there.

One was missing. There was no Xavier York Zimri Green, or even an X.Y.Z. Green. Alphabet Green's name had not been on the crew list.
Alphabet Green was the seventeenth man.

Without a word he swerved on his heel and pushed back into the officers' tent. Hammond and Hunt had their heads together in a muttered conference. Ignoring this, Wiki snapped, “Where's seaman Green?”

“Who?”

“I don't know what you call him. Xavier?”

“You wouldn't be talking about
Mister
Green, by any chance?”

Wiki blinked with surprise, but said firmly, “That's the man.”

Strangely, the atmosphere of barely controlled rage fled, to be replaced by an air of caution. Hammond and Hunt glanced at each other, and then looked around as if Mr. Green might materialize out of the draperies covering the tent frame.

Joel Hammond said, “He sleeps here, but I don't know where he is most times.”

“Why isn't he on the crew list?”

“Because he's the goddamned supercargo, why else? He was Captain Reed's agent—the man in charge of trade. As I told you, he's
Mister
Green. He came on board at Rio, and he ain't nothing to do with me.”

My God,
thought Wiki. Suddenly a great deal was coming clear. He said slowly, “So Captain Reed decided to bring the
Annawan
to Shark Island after he picked up Mr. Green in Rio? After he'd heard what
Green
had to tell him about the wreck of the
Hero?
”

Again, Joel Hammond looked at Hunt, who shrugged and shook his head. “Who knows? Mr. Green was the supercargo of the
Hero,
true. Why don't you ask his widow?”

“Why not?” said Wiki softly, and left the tent.

Then he stood still, his eyes scanning the beach again. There was no sign at all of Alphabet Green—he'd vanished as if he'd never existed. George Rochester was down at the edge of the surf—Wiki could hear him issuing orders. The cutter was still floating close to the beach, but when Wiki looked in the direction of Annabelle's tent, to his alarm Forsythe was there. Annabelle was standing in the opening of the flap, and he was gesticulating angrily.

He crossed the space swiftly and touched Forsythe's shoulder, then danced out of range as the southerner whirled around, his fists up and his face suffused with rage.

“She's sticking to that goddamned story!” he yelled.

Annabelle was on the verge of tears. “I swear I saw someone on the quarterdeck!” she protested. “And it was you, I swear it was you!”

“Do you believe her?” Forsythe demanded.

“She certainly saw
someone,
” Wiki said bleakly. He looked at Annabelle and demanded, “Who was in the galley just before Ezekiel was killed?”

“What?” She trembled visibly.

“You called out to
someone.
Tell me the truth! Was it Robert Festin?”

“No! Why would I call out to him?”

“He wasn't in the galley?”

“No! I don't know
where
he was.”

Forsythe shouted, “What the
hell
does this mean?”

Wiki said grimly, “It means that there was no one at all in the galley—and that it would be a very good idea to search her tent.”

“What?”
Annabelle cringed, going white and then red as horrified emotions chased each other across her face. “Search my things? But why? Wiki, how can you do this to me? I've done nothing wrong!”

“One of the murder weapons is lost. It could be hidden here.”

“What?
C'est impossible!
”

Wiki wanted to hold her—to shake her. He couldn't, of course, but his voice shook as he demanded, “Do you want to risk the knife being used against
you?
”

Numbly, she shook her head, and shrank away as they both pushed past her into the tent, to be enfolded by her scent of perfume and dusting powder. Clothes were strewn everywhere, piled on the lady chair, the dresser, and the mattress. Forsythe went straight to the barrel of weapons and tipped it over on the one bare patch of floor with a great thump and much crashing. Then he made more noise as he sorted roughly through the pistols, knives, muskets, and clubs, throwing them back one by one.

Annabelle, her face paper white, was no help at all with searching her baskets and trunks, so Wiki went through them himself, feeling extremely uncomfortable about it. As always, he was amazed at the unyielding weight of corset stays, and wondered why women tortured their delicate flesh into strange and difficult shapes. Petticoats and gowns shimmered and rustled and sagged in his hands. One of the boxes was entirely filled with hats, and another with shoes, but there was no sign of the knife. A search of the drawers of the one dressing table was equally fruitless, though it turned up two loaded pistols, plus, very oddly, a leather belt with two attached holsters for the pistols. Obviously, he thought, it had belonged to Ezekiel, but he couldn't imagine why it was stowed with her things.

Then, right at the back of the tent, behind the dresser, he found a large and sturdy trunk. He looked at the folded clothes it held—and froze.

“My God,” he whispered.

“What is it?” Forsythe's voice said in his ear, and then whispered harshly, “Wa-al, by all the little gods, look what we've got here.”

At the top was a small pile of blue and white shirts in a distinctive style, each with a band at the neck instead of a collar—a band that was secured with a single large deer-horn button.

Thirty-four

As one, Wiki and Forsythe leapt into the cutter, while Forsythe barked at the crew to get back to the brig. Then, when they were under way, he turned to Wiki and said grimly, “You'd better tell me what this is all about.”

“It was Alphabet Green.”

“Who?”

“Annabelle Reed's cousin.”

“Who?”

“The man who escorted Annabelle to the wake. You told me about that yourself.”

Forsythe's mouth opened and shut, and then he said thoughtfully, “That man, huh?”

“Aye.” Then Wiki frowned, remembering that Alphabet had taken Annabelle back to the after house once the prayers were over—which meant that he hadn't been present when Forsythe's knife had been stolen from his belt at the time of the spree.

Nevertheless, he persevered, saying, “He must have been the one who stole your knife—not once, but twice. Did you notice him getting close to you when you were working on the
Annawan?
”

Forsythe's mouth compressed, and he bit out, “I didn't notice anyone. I put the knife down and plain forgot about it—the same as I did just before the wake, the same night that Zack was killed.”

“What!”

“When you asked me today where I was when I saw it last, I not only remembered where I put it down on the
Annawan
yesterday afternoon, but at the same time I damn well remembered that when I lost it on the night of the wake, I'd seen it last in the captain's cabin.”

“You
left
it in the captain's cabin before you went off to the prayers?” Wiki echoed incredulously.
My God,
he thought, so
that's
how Alphabet got hold of the knife that night!

“Annabelle Reed asked me to cut a lashing around one of her trunks, and I hauled it out, and put it down, and…”

And left without remembering to pick it up again. Wiki finished the sentence in his mind. The confession, he saw, made Forsythe very angry, as if he were looking for someone else to blame for his lapse.

Wiki said grimly, “I wish you'd remembered that earlier.”

“Well, I bloody well didn't, did I? I had enough on my mind!”

“I
knew
Alphabet spent the night of the wake in the after house—he told me himself that he slept in Captain Reed's stateroom because Annabelle was scared to be alone. Because he left the deck as soon as the prayers were over, I didn't think he'd had a chance to steal your knife. If I'd known that you'd left it in the cabin, it would've been a different matter.”

“It's not my goddamned fault!” Forsythe sounded at the end of his tether. “I've only just remembered, as I said—she's a witch of a bitch, as you should bloody know—she stops a man from thinking straight in his head. And Zack was making sheep's eyes at her, too, which made me wild. Then I found that Zack had been cheating those bloody sheep of seamen, and I had to shake him around to get him to give their money back. Then we got drunk, so I have trouble remembering what happened. So, for God's sake, stop getting at me—I had enough on my mind! And I blame myself worse than you can ever blame me,” he muttered.

The cutter arrived at the side of the brig, and Wiki scrambled up to deck with Forsythe close behind. Sua and Tana were there, but otherwise the brig was apparently deserted.

Forsythe shouted, “What are you two black bastards looking at?”

The two Samoans disappeared rapidly into the forecastle. Forsythe swerved round at Wiki, and snapped, “So what next?”

“Festin—I have to talk to Festin.” Wiki lifted his voice, and shouted, “Robert!”

“What? But Annabelle Reed said that he wasn't in the galley—so what the hell d'you reckon he could've seen? The only other place he could've been was the pantry—and the pantry is out of sight and sound of the deck, as you keep on pointing out.”