The Devil's Own Luck (31 page)

“I’m sorry.”

“Weren’t your fault, Mr Ludlow.” Pender raised himself painfully on to his elbows. “It was my fault. Turns out it was one of the marines that had been getting them worked up about your brother. Trouble was the bastard must have heard me talking to Smithy and his mates. Sore heads the lot of them, and sorry for the trouble, if you please. I was coming to see you when they grabbed me. Couldn’t fight them off.” Pender gently let himself down again. “Nothing you said would have stopped them flogging me.”

“Mr Outhwaite.”

“Sir.”

“How long will his back take to heal?”

“He’ll be up and about, but stiff, mind, by tomorrow. He won’t be fit for much for mor’n a week.”

“I want you in my cabin, Pender. Can you arrange that, Mr Outhwaite?”

“Are you saying to stay aft?”

“I am.”

“Don’t see as there are many of the officers will appreciate that.”

“I shall probably kill the first one that says anything.” Quiet spoken he might be, but there was no doubting Harry’s intensity.

“Harry! What happened?” James was standing in the doorway. Crevitt behind him. Harry looked at the parson. Crevitt walked a little way off. Harry pulled James into the sick bay.

“Another warning to me, James. They flogged Pender to warn me to stop asking questions.”

James looked at Pender’s raw back. He blenched slightly and turned away.

“Every turn we take, James, someone is there to cross us, or stand in our way. We are not dealing with one man aboard this ship. We seem to be up against half the crew.”

“Not half,” said Pender, face down.

“A turn of phrase. But since we don’t know how many there are . . .”

“You mean more than one person killed Bentley?”

“No. I think it was one person. But it is a person who has others to do his bidding.” Harry looked away, not wishing James to see his face.

“Then do as Carter asks, Harry. Stop asking questions.”

“I can’t.” He wanted to tell James that if he could find the motive, he would have proof. But that would lead to an explanation he wanted to avoid.

“You’ll end up with a knife in your back.”

“And you’ll hang.”

“Brother, if it comes to the point where they knife you, I won’t survive you for very long.”

“I can’t stop now.” Still he would not look at James. “You think it’s Carter, don’t you?”

Pender turned sharply, and gasped with pain. Outhwaite’s jaw dropped. Harry just stood still, finally looking at his brother.

“Don’t you?”

“Yes. I do.”

“So, are you pursuing this to save me, or to get him?” Harry was silent again. “I’m willing to take my chances in a court.”

“No.” Soft but very definite. “Mr Outhwaite. Please arrange to have Pender taken to my cabin. There is room for another cot.”

“What are you plotting, Harry?”

“Your release, James. And the conviction of a murderer. When did you guess?”

“This morning. I had a feeling that you weren’t telling me everything.”

Harry smiled. “Perhaps that is the first thing I should do. But I don’t know everything, so I can’t. I intend to know by tonight.”

“Or be dead?”

“Dead. Rest assured, James, that if it comes to that, it won’t be me who is dead.”

“I cannot dissuade you?”

“No. And as for you taking your chances with a court, James: why, the way things have developed here, I would not give you odds. Someone is determined that you should hang, for no other reason than to clear themselves. Once you are convicted no further questions will be asked. If I am right, then the personal satisfaction of seeing me suffer is just a bonus.”

“Mr Outhwaite,” said James, trying to enlist the surgeon’s aid.

“I’m not sure that this is right, Mr Ludlow.” Harry’s look stopped him from saying any more.

“I should stay away from the brandy tonight, Mr Outhwaite. You may develop a loose tongue and that could lead to great danger.” No one was sure if Harry was directly threatening the surgeon. “No drink, d’ye hear?”

“Clearly, Mr Ludlow. Clearly.”

“Good. Because people who are prepared to kill to keep a secret generally aren’t too fussy about who turns out to be the victim. Just so long as the secret’s safe.” Outhwaite left quickly, looking very worried.

“I’ll get a couple of hands to help Pender.”

Harry turned back to his brother. “James. Stay with Crevitt tonight. Don’t let him out of your sight. You are safe as long as you are with him.”

James just nodded.

“James. I mean it. No heroics. You will do more harm than good. I need to make Carter think that I have heeded his warning. If you start trying to help me, you will ruin everything.”

“Not a very heroic role.”

“You may castigate me for it for the next fifty years. But you will abide by my wish?”

James nodded and turned his head away. Pender had raised himself from the cot and was trying to get up.

“That’s it then,” said Harry. He looked at the serious faces. “Come along, don’t be so glum. Don’t you know, I’ve the devil’s own luck?” He gave James a mighty slap on the back. Pender shrank back lest he be tempted to do the same with him.

“You’ll need it, brother. I think even Old Nick would blench at the thought of taking on over six hundred souls in their own backyard.”

“My backyard too, James. I was born to this.”

It was a long day for Harry, though his brother, confined to the conversational pleasures of Crevitt, was to claim later that he had suffered most. James had very little in common with the parson, whom he found unctuous, rather than pious, and parochial in the extreme. Not that James was one to sneer at provincial life. At home in town, he still had a great regard for the open country where he had been raised, and for the people who inhabited that land.

It was just that Crevitt’s experience seemed so narrow. James knew many people whose horizon was limited to the next village. He found it strange that Crevitt, who had taken holy orders at Oxford, and had since spent time in other parts of the world, seemed to concentrate on the pleasures to be derived from life in a hamlet on the windswept fens. Was it all just a thinly disguised attempt to make James more charitably disposed towards his friend Carter? Certainly the captain, and his family, cropped up repeatedly in the conversation. He was told repeatedly how much Carter cared for his sister and his nephew. The lady’s husband, however, was not included in this rosy remembrance, having apparently disappeared not long after siring young Oliver Turnbull.

The parson could not hide his own feelings for Turnbull’s mother. Even when talking about Carter’s young wife, who had died in childbirth, having already miscarried twice, that lady was held up as an example of all that was wise, good, and admirable. James listened, summoning all his innate politeness, to this dreary tale, reflecting none the less on the potential benefits of death by hanging.

The ship edged out of the bay on the falling tide, and once clear of the surrounding cliffs turned due south, setting courses and topsails on the main and mizzen, bracing her yards round to take advantage of the westerly wind. The sun shone and the clement weather had returned. The hands, once the ship was under way, were set to making and mending again, although they were called away continually to trim the sails, since the absence of a proper foremast was making the
Magnanime
sail a bit crank.

Pender slept face down in Harry’s cabin. Outhwaite had administered a sizeable dose of laudanum so that he was in no pain. Outhwaite himself was shaking visibly from his lack of a drink, but he was too frightened of Harry’s strictures to even contemplate assuaging his needs. Harry himself sat in the wardroom, waiting for Craddock. Strange that it was only yesterday that he had challenged the man to find out what he knew. So much had happened in the meantime.

Few of the other officers were present. Those on watch were on deck, and those who were not had decided to catch up on their sleep. The exception was Turnbull, who sat at the other end of the wardroom, by the door, sorting out shot and powder for the two pistols on the table before him. Occasionally he would look up at Harry, gazing at him, as if trying to make out what he was thinking. The object of his curiosity sat there, going over in his mind what he knew, what he suspected, and how he intended to go about proving it.

He was nagged by the continuing suspicion that he might be wrong. That the cause of the whole affair had originated on shore, and that the actual murder of Bentley was not, in any way, connected with the ship. But the events of the last two days kept dragging him back to his original conclusions. Why excite the more gullible sections of the crew with tales of Jonahs? Why then attack Pender for having asked questions about it? The motive, whatever it was, had to be something that had happened, and could therefore be unearthed, on board ship.

And then there was the possibility, more apparent to James than to him, that he might be looking in the wrong place. One by one, Harry ran through the warrant officers and commissioned officers, trying to find reasons why they should be included in the list of suspects. One by one, he dismissed them from his calculations. It was nothing to do with motive, since they had all disliked the man. It was a matter of power. The power to make things happen.

He was left with Carter. The captain had massive authority. And he did not have to rule through loyalty, with the potent weapon of fear so readily to hand. There was one other point to clarify, one that could again point to Carter, but that would have to be confirmed by Craddock.

“Find the motive.” The words rattled around in his brain. What would make Carter murder Bentley? The late first lieutenant had shown him scant respect, but that was reason for court martial, rather than a knife in the ribs. Another question. Why had Carter tolerated such an open display of arrogant disregard for the normal conventions of the service? What advantage did Bentley have that so allowed him to flout the chain of command? The little that Harry had seen, and all that he had heard, gave the impression that Bentley was in a position to break Carter, instead of the other way round.

That was the only thing Carter cared about, his position. Harry knew the man well enough to recognize his obsession with rank. He was still relatively poor, even as a post captain, and given his lack of patronage, still financially and professionally insecure. So the answer must relate to that. Like all men, Carter had a vision of the future. If Bentley had threatened that vision, then he would have to die. And if the late premier’s behaviour was anything to go by, then he had certainly done just that. He tried to recall every word that Outhwaite had said, seeking, in the surgeon’s tale, for a possible clue.

“Bentley had been like that for some time, though it has to be admitted he did not behave in such a cavalier fashion right at the start of the commission. Anyway, he and Carter were close. The premier was allowed many liberties denied to others of his rank. Carter let Bentley run the ship, and appeared happy with the way things were.

“There had been a couple of deaths that could not quite be explained. But that happened in ships, what with bullying and gambling debts not being paid. But the boy, Larkin, had upset the hands, and no one, apart from the fact that the lad was well liked, could quite say why the crew were so rattled.

“Carter and Bentley responded to this discontent with a massive increase in punishments, and they were in agreement on that. You had to admit it worked, for whatever set the hands to grumbling was successfully quashed by the cat. Things seemed to return to normal, if you can call a crew cowed by the lash ‘normal.’

“No one,” he had said, “could quite recall the date at which all that changed, the date at which the captain started to question the premier’s decisions, and Bentley to behave the way he did, because it grew slowly. The man had always been a heavy drinker, but it had got progressively worse, at the same time as his attitude to the captain’s authority had deteriorated. It centred on the punishments, which Carter wanted to reduce. Bentley was dead against this. From the odd frosty exchange, it turned to thinly disguised insults. The captain tried to rope him in, but after a while, he seemed just to give up.”

It had come as no shock to the wardroom. From what Harry had gathered, Bentley had always treated the officers in an even more disdainful manner, insulting them all freely, and making the dinners in the wardroom, which he insisted they attend, an absolute hell. The experience was generally made tolerable by the fact that Bentley regularly passed out before the meal ended. As James had said, he was not sorely missed, and had things stopped with his death, Harry would have been left with any number of suspects, including the crew, most of whom had at one time or another been flogged for some trivial offence at Bentley’s behest. After all, in truth, anyone aboard could have filched his knife.

But things had not ceased. Not satisfied with catching his brother, knife in hand over the body, two witnesses had appeared, as if by magic. Men whom he was sure had not been near the scene of the crime. On the surface, Carter had such a watertight case against James that there was no reason for him to do anything. But he had, making plain that Harry was not to question the officers or the crew. And that chance remark of Pender’s about a Jonah had been taken up and turned against them. The lack of a guard on the spirit room, and the fact that those men had been allowed to plunder it, stood out starkly for attention. The accusations of mutiny, which were universally held to be absurd! But the final indication was the unnecessary flogging of Pender.

If Carter did not want Harry to ask questions, then he must have something to hide. It had to be something to do with the ship. Between them, perhaps because of their growing animosity, Bentley and Carter had turned the seventy-four into a floating hell. Outhwaite had been adamant that it had not always been so. Though never a truly happy ship, the
Magnanime
had been a deal better than many he had sailed on. All the information pointed to a sudden breach between the two senior officers.