The North Water (16 page)

“Show me.”

McKendrick leans forwards and holds out his left hand. The fingers are normal, but the joint of the thumb is badly misshapen and the thumb itself appears stiff and lifeless.

“So you cannot grip with this hand at all?”

“Only with the four fingers. 'Tis lucky it was my left one, I suppose.”

“Try to grip my wrist,” Sumner tells him, “like this.”

He rolls up his sleeve and holds out his bare arm. McKendrick grips it.

“Squeeze as hard as you can.”

“I'm squeezing now.”

Sumner feels the pressure of the four fingers digging into his arm flesh, but from the thumb, nothing at all.

“Is that the best you can do?” he says. “Don't hold back.”

“I ain't holding anything back,” he insists. “Man hit my thumb bone with a fucking great lump hammer two years ago aboard the
Whitby
, I tell you, when we were in dock repairing a hatch cover. Smashed it near to pieces. And I have plenty of witnesses to
that
occurrence—including the captain himself—who will happily swear on the Bible to his foolishness.”

Sumner tells him to let go, then tugs his shirtsleeve back down.

“Why didn't you tell me about your injured hand when I examined you before?”

“You weren't asking after my hand, if I recall.”

“If you can't grip any better than that, how could you have strangled the boy? You saw the bruises on his neck.”

McKendrick pauses and then looks suddenly wary, as if the surgeon's implications are too large and too hopeful to be easily or quickly absorbed.

“I saw them right enough,” he says. “He had a string of bruises all around his neck just so.”

“And there were two large bruises at the front. Do you remember those? One almost on top of the other. I thought at the time they must have been caused by the two thumbs pressing hard down on the gorge.”

“You remember them?”

“I remember them clearly,” Sumner says. “Two large bruises, one on top of the other one, like two smudges of ink.”

“But I don't have two good thumbs no more,” McKendrick says slowly. “So how did I make them bruises?”

“That's right,” Sumner says. “I need to talk to the captain now. It looks like the fellow with the lump hammer may have saved your neck.”

 

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Brownlee listens to the surgeon's arguments, hoping keenly as he does so that they are wrong. He has no desire to release McKendrick. The carpenter is a convincing culprit, and if he is released (which is the end Sumner seems, for some mystifying reason of his own, to seek), there is no one else aboard the ship who can take his place without a deal of trouble and complication.

“A scrawny cunt like Hannah can be strangled with one hand easy enough, I'd say,” Brownlee argues, “thumb or no thumb. McKendrick isn't tall, but he's plenty strong enough for that.”

“Not with the bruises patterned as they were on Hannah's neck, though. The twin thumb marks were as clear as day.”

“I don't remember thumb marks. I remember a good many bruises, but there is no way on earth of knowing which particular fingers caused which particular marks.”

“Before the burial, I made sketches of Hannah's injuries,” Sumner says. “I thought a court might want to see them if it comes to a trial. Look here.” He puts a leather-bound sketchbook on the table in front of the captain and opens it to the relevant pages. “Do you see what I mean now? Two large oval bruises, one above the other one, there and there.”

He points. Brownlee looks, then rubs his nose and scowls. He is irritated by the surgeon's conscientiousness. What business does he have making ink sketches of a boy's dead body?

“The boy was sewn up in his shroud already. How could you have sketched him?”

“I asked the sailmaker to loosen the stitches, then had them tightened again while the making off was going on. It was easy enough to do.”

Brownlee turns the pages of the sketchbook and winces. There is a detailed rendering of the boy's damaged and ulcerated rectum and a labeled diagram of his broken ribs.

“These pretty pictures of yours prove bugger all,” he says. “McKendrick was seen making advances to the boy, and he is a known and notorious sodomite. Those are the solid facts of the matter. Anything else is guesswork and fancy.”

“The thumb of McKendrick's left hand is damaged beyond repair,” Sumner says. “It is physically impossible for him to have committed this crime.”

“And you are free to express that opinion to the magistrate as soon as we return to England. Perhaps he'll be more convinced by it than I am, but in the meantime, while we are at sea and I'm the captain, McKendrick stays where he is.”

“As soon as we land back in England the real killer will leave the ship and disappear from sight, you do realize that? He will never be caught.”

“Should I arrest the entire fucking crew on suspicion of murder? Is that what you recommend?”

“If it's not McKendrick who killed the boy, it's most likely Henry Drax. He's lying about the carpenter to save himself.”

“You have been reading too many penny dreadfuls, Mr. Sumner, I swear to it.”

“Let me at least examine Drax as I did McKendrick. If he's a murderer, then it's still not too late for the signs to be apparent.”

Brownlee shifts sideways in his chair, tugs down on his stubbled earlobe, and sighs. Although the surgeon is certainly annoying, there is something admirable in his persistence. He is a dogged little fucker all in all.

“Very well,” he says. “If you must. Although if Drax objects to being poked and prodded, I'm not so inclined to press the issue.”

When Drax is called for, he makes no objection. He drops his britches in front of them and stands there grinning. The captain's cabin fills with a stink of stale urine and potted meat.

“At your pleasure, Mr. Sumner,” Drax says, giving the surgeon a coquettish wink.

Sumner, breathing only through his mouth now, bends and examines, with the aid of a magnifying glass, the dangling parabola of Drax's glans.

“Pull back the foreskin please,” Sumner says.

Drax does as he is asked. Sumner nods.

“You have the crabs,” he tells him.

“Aye, I usually do have them. But that int a hanging offense now, is it, Mr. Sumner?”

Brownlee chuckles. Sumner shakes his head and then stands up.

“No visible chancres,” he says. “Show me both your hands now.”

Drax holds them out. Sumner looks at the palms, then turns them over. They are as black and rough as lumps of pig iron.

“The cut on your hand has healed, I see.”

“That wont anything,” he says. “Just a scratch.”

“And you have full use of all your digits, I suppose.”

“Of my
what
?”

“Fingers and thumbs.”

“I do indeed, thanks God.”

“Take off your peacoat and roll up your sleeves.”

“Do you doubt me, Mr. Sumner?” Drax asks as he tugs his arms out of the jacket and starts to unbutton his shirtfront. “Do you doubt me when I tell what I saw by the deckhouse?”

“McKendrick denies it. You know he does.”

“But McKendrick is a sodomite, and what is the word of a sodomite worth in a court of law? Not too much, I'd say.”

“I have good reason to believe him.”

Drax nods at this and continues to undress. He takes his shirt off and his flannels. His chest is dark-pelted, broad, and stoutly muscled; his belly is proudly bulbous, and both his arms are coated in a checker-worked swirl of blue tattoos.

“If you believe the word of that cunt McKendrick, then you must fancy I'm a liar.”

“I don't know what you are.”

“I'm an honorable man, Mr. Sumner,” Drax says, pressing down gradually on the word
honorable
as if honor itself is a complex and esoteric notion, but one he is proud to have mastered. “That's what I am. I do my duty, and I have no cause to feel any shame because of it.”

“What do you intend by that, Drax?” Brownlee asks him. “We're all honorable men here, I think, or honorable enough at least for the requirements of our calling, which is a dirty enough kind of business, as you know.”

“I think the surgeon gets my drift,” Drax says. (He is standing fully naked now—thick-limbed, fistic, unashamed. His face is burned brown and his hands are black from toil, but the rest of his skin—where it is visible beneath the mats of dark hair and the panoply of crude tattooing—is a pure pinkish white like the skin of a babe.) “Him and me are old pals, after all. I helped him search his way back to his cabin after that famous night in Lerwick. You likely won't remember, Mr. Sumner, since you were fast asleep at the time, but me and Cavendish had a good look around before we left to make sure your necessaries was safe and sound just as they should be. Nothing disturbed or out of place.”

Sumner, staring at Drax, instantly understands. They have rooted through his sea chest, read the discharge papers, seen the looted ring.

Brownlee is looking at him curiously.

“Do
you
know what the fuck he's talking about?” he says.

Sumner shakes his head. He casts his eye unthinkingly over Drax's arms and torso, breathing carefully as he does so, pushing back against the inner uproar.

“Do you doubt my knowledge or competency as a surgeon?” he says (sounding preposterous even to himself). “I have served an apprenticeship and have certificates from the Queen's College of Belfast.”

Drax smiles at this, then laughs. His yellowy cock thickens and twitches noticeably upwards.

“You have your little scrap of paper, Mr. Sumner, and I have mine. Now, which one of those two little scraps of paper weighs the most, I wonder, in an English court of law? I never did learn my letters, so I'm not the one to say, but a good lawyer would likely have an opinion, I suppose.”

“I have my evidence,” Sumner says. “It is not a matter of my opinion or my reputation. Who I am, or who I have been, is not the question.”

“And what evidence do you hold against
me
?” Drax asks more fiercely. “Tell me that.”

“We are not accusing you of any crime,” Brownlee says. “That's not why we are here. McKendrick is still down in the hold in chains, remember. Sumner is merely curious about some details of the outrage, that is all.”

Drax ignores Brownlee and continues staring at Sumner.

“What evidence do you hold against
me
?” he says again. “Because if you have none, then it's thee against me, I'd say. My solemn word, sworn on the Bible, against yours.”

Sumner steps backwards and digs his hands into his pockets.

“You are lying about McKendrick,” he says. “I know very well you are.”

Drax turns to Brownlee and taps his finger to his ear.

“Is the ship's surgeon a little hard of hearing, Captain?” he says. “I keep asking him the same fucking question and he don't seem to notice it at all.”

Brownlee scowls, then licks his lips. He is beginning to regret agreeing to Sumner's request. Drax may be something of a savage, but that is no good reason to accuse him of child murder. It is hardly surprising he has taken the hump.

“What evidence do we hold against Drax in this matter, Sumner? Tell us now, please.”

Sumner looks down at the floor between his feet for a moment and then up at the cabin's pitched glass skylight.

“I have no evidence against Henry Drax,” he confesses flatly. “None at all.”

“Then let's call an end to this nonsense,” Brownlee says. “Get your fucking clothes back on and get to work.”

Drax gazes dismissively at Sumner for a long moment, then reaches down and lifts his britches from the cabin floor. Each of his movements is considered and powerful; his body, stinking and rotund as it is, clagged and filthy in its folds and creases, possesses a ghastly voluptuousness nonetheless. Sumner looks on without watching. He is thinking of the medicine chest and the delicious pleasures it contains. He is thinking of the Achaeans and the Trojans and the meddlings of Athena and Ares. McKendrick will hang for sure, Sumner realizes. This crime requires a villain and he has been appointed to the post. He will dangle and kick at the end of a rope. There is no way out now, no Hera to pluck him from the scaffold.

Drax bends and then straightens, prods his leg into the hole of his britches and pulls them up his thighs. His broad back and pungent arse are patched with fur; his socked feet are blockish and simian. Brownlee looks on impatiently. The outrage is behind him now, and his mind is on other things. McKendrick will swing for what he did, and that is that. What matters now is the sinking of the ship, which is a tricky business to get right. She needs to go down slow enough to ensure that all the cargo can be saved, but not so slow that any last-gasp repairs are possible. And there is no way of being sure beforehand how the ice will behave and how close or far away Campbell will be able to plausibly maneuver the
Hastings
. The underwriters are alive these days to various kinds of trickery; if they sense a conspiracy, they will descend on the crew in port and commence offering them rewards for useful information. If it is not done right, he could end up in a cell in Hull jail rather than enjoying his retirement strolling on the strands of Bridlington.

“What's that gash on your arm?” he says to Drax. “Have you cut yourself again? Sumner will give you a plaster for that if you ask him sweetly, I'm sure.”

“It's nothing,” Drax says. “A scratch with a harpoon, that's all.”

“Looks worse than nothing to me,” Brownlee says.

Drax shakes his head and picks his pea coat off the table.

“Let me see it,” Sumner says.

“It's nothing,” Drax says again.