The Devil's Own Luck (38 page)

“I’ll be on my way.”

“No,” said Crevitt quickly. “Stay, Mr Craddock. I would want someone independent to hear what I have to say.” The inference was plain. James, taking the sketch pad, raised his eyebrows, and looked at Harry.

Harry smiled. “I have already narrowly avoided a keel-hauling from Mr Craddock, Parson. I rather suspect that you will want me to go down on my knees.”

“You may see this as an occasion for jocularity, sir, but I do not. My friend stands in grave danger of severe censure by his superiors. Had this been discovered in the normal run of events, it could have been hushed up. Mr Bentley’s murder makes that impossible.”

“Then the man will have served some purpose.”

“Your continued animosity is unbecoming, sir.”

“Is it, indeed,” snapped Harry in reply. “Well let me tell you something, since you are such a nautical ignoramus, Mr Crevitt. Your friend is a weak commander. He is inclined to hand over executive authority to an officer just because he likes him. In Mr Bentley’s case, he seemed competent in everything else but his manner of drinking, so this ship still floats.”

“Captain Carter is a brave and competent officer, sir.” Crevitt was blazingly angry, fighting not to raise his voice.

“Gentlemen,” said Craddock, both hands raised.

“Brave, oh yes, he is brave. He doesn’t care how many men he kills with his bravery! The other day we fought two French ships yard-arm to yard-arm. You spent half a day burying the results.”

“A most commendable affair.”

“Commendable!” Harry laughed. “Stick to prayers, Parson. A junior midshipman could have done better than your much-vaunted friend. Those two Frenchmen were not long out of port. This ship has been in commission for three years. Carter chooses to fight them exactly on their terms, and it was only by luck, and the state of the weather, that we survived the engagement.”

Crevitt tried to recover his composure. “I dare say the great Harry Ludlow would have done better.”

“You are a fool, Crevitt, as blinded by your friendship, as I was by my hate. We could have out-sailed those two. Nearly every man on this ship can hand, reef, and steer. We could have run rings round them. Instead, with that pigheadedness for which your friend is famous, we came to a halt in between them, and let them practically pound us to pieces.”

James intervened. “Harry. You are shouting at the wrong person.”

“You’re right,” said Harry, suddenly deflated: “Please do not come defending him to me, Mr Crevitt. The man is a dangerous fool.”

“Do you intend to repeat the allegations you so nearly made in his cabin?”

“No, Mr Crevitt. But I would ask you to examine your conscience, and when you are telling people how good a commander Captain Carter is, ask yourself how many men in charge of a ship would have let such a thing happen. Then go to any officer, and explain truthfully what happened with the
Verite
and the
Medusa.
Not the officers on this ship, because they see loyalty to their captain, and their careers, to be above anything else.”

“Harry.” Again James failed to stop his brother, as did the blush on Craddock’s face.

“Perhaps you will hear the truth from other lips. That your hero behaved like the worst kind of scrub. And you will observe, that should you mention that occasion, every officer aboard this ship will blush, and rightly so.”

“I think that we have done all we came for Mr Crevitt.” It was obvious that Craddock felt sorry for the parson, by the way he took his arm and led him out. All the officers were standing in the wardroom facing Harry’s cabin. He had not held his voice in check, and it had carried through the door. They were stony faced, for he had finally said to them what he had wanted to say for days.

“Well damn me, Harry,” said James in a languid voice, “just when I need their good offices, you have to go and tell them the truth.” Somehow, what James said was a bigger slap in the face than the words Harry had used. His air was so insulting.

Harry shut the door.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“PERHAPS
we are not entirely back where we started,” said Harry. “I can’t think the testimony of the two witnesses will stand up in court. And the whole nature of the prosecution will be thrown into doubt by the things that have been allowed to go on aboard the
Magnanime.”

“Intensive examination of the barge crew might produce a result.” James had picked up the folder that Crevitt had delivered.

“Not just them, James. Everyone. Carter can’t interfere now. There are the officers, and the midshipmen, in fact, the entire crew.”

“You realize that we are probably not terribly popular.”

“Damn popularity. What I want is the truth. The truth about that boy, and the name of whoever killed Bentley. If I have to offend every officer in the Navy, I don’t give a fig. I’m aware that you think me a ruffian, James, but that is the way I am and I will not change . . .”

James sat silently touching up his drawings. His silence seemed a form of reproach, and Harry felt it keenly.

“You think I went too far?” he asked.

“Perhaps. In one breath you say to Craddock that the only way to clear this matter up is to question all the officers. Then you go and tell them all that they are little better than scoundrels. In truth, brother, I sometimes wonder if you should be let out alone.” James’s smile took the sting out of the remark.

“Perhaps it needed to be said, to clear the air.”

“I cannot see that venting your spleen at this juncture will materially help our cause, putting aside the fact that I am still under suspicion of murder.”

“Materially? Have no fear in that respect,” Harry said gaily. “Why, we will probably even be compensated for the
Medusa
now.”

“I can’t see what has changed so drastically to make you say that.”

“Can’t you? It doesn’t occur to you that Carter is probably finished?”

James smiled. “You always were of a sanguine nature, Harry.”

“It has got me out of many a scrape.”

“Cruel of me I know, but I feel the need to remind you that it got you into this one.” Again the disarming smile.

Harry paced up and down the cabin. “At the same time it rather depresses me,” he said.

“What does?” James still flicked at his drawing.

“The way that everyone on this ship will now seek to assure us of their support, should we call for an inquiry into Carter’s conduct.”

That made him look up from his pad. “Are they such a pusillanimous crew?”

“I told you before, did I not? Lord, it was only a couple of days ago, yet it seems an age away. They care about their careers. A few days ago Carter was a successful commander. He had taken a prize, and if the circumstances were questionable, it at least looked good in a dispatch.”

“And all that is altered?”

“Come, James, even you must see that. You have no idea how the Admiralty frowns upon sodomy, though I should think half the Board has been guilty of indulgence at some time in their careers. Crevitt was correct. Without Bentley’s murder it would have been hushed up, and all the officers would have entered into the conspiracy. Not now, and all those men out there, in the wardroom, are thinking that it might not be a bad idea to distance themselves from a captain who is so clearly headed for the professional rocks.”

James frowned. “I find it hard to believe that Craddock will behave like that.”

“He has no choice. For if he does not, he could well sink with Carter. He will be called upon to tell the truth, and in his case, I think that is all he will do. But others will gild the truth, to show themselves in a better light. And it will only take one of them to hint that the action with the
Verite
was open to misinterpretation, for them all to be clamouring to tell the court how they tried to dissuade him from letting us down.”

Harry looked at his brother, who had gone back to his sketching. For some reason it irritated him.

“James, will you stop fiddling with those drawings!”

“I am fiddling with them at your request,” said James, surprised. He put aside the colour he was using and turned the drawing towards Harry. It showed Bentley arched backwards, having just been stabbed. Blood was spurting out of his chest. His assailant, dressed like Bentley, in an officer’s coat, was correct in every detail, except there was no face. James had drawn the surrounding detail from memory.

“What about the other one?” asked Harry.

“I finished that last night,” said James, producing another drawing from his folder. Harry took it, spreading his arms wide to look at it. The first thing he noticed was himself, with the bandage still around his head, both hands gripping the doorframe. Was his expression at the time really so shocked?

“Is that the look I had on my face?” he queried.

“To the life,” replied James, with an assurance that defied further discussion.

“You’ve got Carter well. He almost looks pleased.”

“With a chap like Bentley, I’m not surprised. I must say I shared your feelings about him to start with.”

“What made you doubt it?”

“I don’t know. It just seemed so unlikely. Would a man who had faced you over a barrel stoop to such a thing? Hard to explain. It became clearer as I drew him. His face had a very singular expression, but not that of a murderer, more of a man who has just been acquitted. When did you first suspect him?”

“I can’t be sure. I suppose I always wanted it to be him. So neat a revenge. He had everything in his control, a captain usually does. But mainly, it was the wig powder. Bentley had a great streak of it on his coat. And I found some on the deck before the hands had a chance to swab it clean. I taxed Craddock about it. He wasn’t much help, not knowing who had their wigs on, and who didn’t. That is one of my key questions we have to put to them. But Carter, being bald, was never without his. It looked as though Bentley had knocked the wig off in the struggle.”

James was incredulous, his eyebrows arched in surprise. “You based your whole case against him on that?”

“The knife being stuck in the deck started me off. But yes, I began my case against him on that,” said Harry, defensively.

“Tenuous, Harry. Very tenuous.”

“There wasn’t much else, short of an actual witness.” Harry’s voice took on a querulous note. “Why do you think I went scurrying about the ship? If I’d had any proof to go on, I wouldn’t have bothered. What we needed was a motive.”

“With Bentley, his mere existence seemed to be motive enough.”

“Think about it, James. It was quite an elaborate affair. I don’t say the whole thing was worked out to the last detail, but my knife was stolen in advance. Stolen to be used on Bentley, to be left to incriminate me. Why me? Who hated me enough?” Harry opened his hands to plead. “The answer is obvious.”

“But wrong?”

“I admit to an obsession. Thinking calmly, Carter would want to kill me himself, rather than leave it to a hangman.”

“So you are back where you started, and so am I.”

“Not entirely, James. I believe I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities. One of the ship’s officers, aided by the barge crew . . .”

“And the other?”

“One of the midshipmen. Everyone says how popular that boy was. Was he liked by some of the senior mids? I remember my days in the midshipmen’s berth. What a hotbed of passion that can be. I particularly want to talk to Denbigh.”

“Why him?”

“I was talking to Prentice one day. I mentioned Larkin. The boy was about to say something when Denbigh interrupted and sent him about his duties. And he has the most unnerving way of staring at me, as though he is trying to read my mind. And remember that the mids wear wigs on dress occasions. They are too junior to plead fashion. That room, and what happened there, opens up a whole host of possible motives.”

Harry noticed that his brother was looking glum. “I know the case against you still stands. But with all this evidence to present, it gives us a chance.”

Laying the drawing on the desk, Harry pointed to the wig on Carter’s head. “What we need in this drawing is another one of these.”

“I certainly don’t recall any other people wearing wigs.”

“Damn.” Harry was staring hard at the picture.

“Sorry,” said James, “to have upset your pet theory.”

“Shhh! Let me think.” Harry’s mind was off racing through the possibilities. He started pacing the cabin.

“Am I to be included . . .” Harry held up his hand, silencing his brother. He strode up and down, his mind running over the events of the last few days. A vision of his fight in the pump shaft came into his mind. The last one out. The man in command. The blood he thought he had seen. That same person had probably cleared the room of the incriminating evidence. And who had Craddock told off for being missing, once the alarm had been raised? Finally he stopped and looked at his brother.

“The other drawing, the one showing Bentley’s death.”

“Yes.” James picked it up.

“I want you to do me another one of those. But with some important differences. And then there is another one I will need.”

“Am I to be told anything?” asked James querulously.

“Why yes, brother. I was wrong about the wig powder.”

“Is that all?”

Harry laughed, in a way that he had not done since they had first sighted the
Verite.
He outlined his requirements to James. He then went to talk to Craddock.

“You say that Meehan and Porter maintain that they are telling the truth. I say that they are lying, both about being witnesses, and being in that room. All I am asking is the right to examine them. Time is pressing.”

The lookout had sighted the Rock of Gibraltar while Harry was waiting to see Carter. They had been getting closer to the land for some while. The southern coast of Spain was clearly visible to the naked eye.

“And I have told you that it is not your place to do so.”

“Captain Carter. I have but one aim, and that is to clear my brother’s name, to remove any possibility that he can be tried for a murder he did not commit. If you let me question these men, I will undertake to stay silent on the uses to which that room was put.”