The Poisoned Island (25 page)

And with a
hurrah
the room raises its tankards and downs yet another portion of porter, and as the plates are cleared, cheese, wine, and brandy make an appearance. Banks turns to Harriott. Harriott, whose time with Horton has wrought
more changes in him than he’d care to admit, affects the same bonhomie as the rest of the room while watching the President carefully. The President now seems as cheerful as any man in the room, but the old magistrate can clearly see the lines of care drawn across his forehead, and thinks there was rather more to that little speech than the mere baiting of clergymen.

“This business on the
Solander
, Harriott. I understand you wish to discuss it with me.”

“Yes, Sir Joseph. Three men are dead. The first was apparently killed in his rooms by an unknown person, for reasons we cannot establish. Two other men were killed only this weekend past—they roomed together in Deptford, and were again murdered for reasons unknown. There are some grounds to believe the killings are connected, the principal one being, of course, that all three were crewmen on the
Solander
. We are holding one man on suspicion of being involved in some way, but there is no direct evidence to link him with the killings, and nor does he say anything to incriminate himself.”

“Who is this man?”

“His name is Nott. He is a man of the island, the son of a missionary. He acted as chaplain on the vessel on the return journey.”

“Chaplain?” Banks frowns. “Hopkins made no mention of such an appointment to me. This chaplain is, I take it, the son of Henry Nott?”

“Yes, sir. You know the man?”

“I know him well indeed, Harriott. I have kept in contact with Otaheite as far as I can, and of course I needed to arrange matters for the
Solander
voyage. Anyone who knows Otaheite well knows Henry Nott—he is an impressive man, though still a missionary.”

Harriott does not pursue that. Not after what just transpired. Banks looks at him, as if anticipating some response. When none comes, he continues.

“The presence of his son in England is confounded odd, mind. Also odd is the fact that I did not know Nott even
had
a son. Who is the mother?”

“Why, I . . . do not know. Young Nott’s appearance suggests his mother was an islander.”

“An
islander
? Nott with a native woman? I fear you must be mistaken, sir. That is by no means in Nott’s character. Others have no doubt indulged themselves with the pleasures of Otaheite’s women, myself among them.” Banks speaks directly, unembarrassed. “And this man is of what age? He must be at least twenty years, must he not? Nott did not reach the island until fifteen years ago. It is out of the question that Nott can be father to this man you are holding.”

The obvious truth of this fact gives Harriott pause. It also causes him some embarrassment; for Banks to have so quickly understood this, when he and Horton had given it no mind . . .

“But why have you arrested this man?” Banks asks.

“Well, sir, this Nott, as he calls himself, was visiting the two men who were killed in Rotherhithe. He is, as far as we know, the last man to see them alive.”

“And yet you are here, Harriott. Which suggests to me that you do not think this man was the killer. Whoever he truly is.”

“I do not believe he is of that character, no, sir. And I do not see his motivation for committing such a crime.”

“Yet his background has been called into question.”

“By this conversation, certainly.”

“There are no other avenues of investigation?”

“We are doing all we can. But I would be remiss in my work if I did not seek to ask
you
if there might be any indication of trouble aboard the ship.”

“None that I know of. Hopkins is assisting you?”

“The captain? Yes, sir. I have met the man myself.”

“He is a first-class fellow. His voyage transported more live plants and cuttings than any other in history. He followed my instructions to the letter. I am delighted with him.”

“You cannot think of any reason why someone should want to kill these men?”

“Well, let us examine the circumstances. The deaths occurred in London, not on the voyage itself. That in itself is worthy of note, is it not?”

“How so?”

“Because they did
not
happen during the voyage. Believe me, Harriott, it is a trivial matter to kill a man on board a ship. But to kill
three
men—well, now that would draw some attention. And the deaths happened only days after arrival?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So it is perhaps safe to deduce that the motivation for the deaths was something which happened either on the voyage, or on the island itself. But why not kill the men on the island if it were the latter?”

“It is an excellent question. I do not have an answer.”

“Hmm.”

Sir Joseph’s face is one of fierce concentration.

“Does anything link the three men?” he asks.

“Nothing we can guess at. The captain sees no obvious connection.”

“How were they killed?”

“We believe the first man was strangled. The second or third deaths—their throats were cut.”

“Hmm. An interesting combination: a calculated killing, and then two passionate ones.”

“Not necessarily, Sir Joseph. The second or third deaths also had something calculated about them. Nott claims to have seen the murdered men alive and asleep, but the room around them ransacked. He ran away, and by accident encountered my officer, who returned to the room with him. There, they discovered the men dead, their throats cut and the blood fresh. The men were found in bed, as if they’d been killed in their sleep. We are unable to establish how the blood can have been so fresh if the rooms were so thoroughly ransacked after their deaths, nor can we understand how they would have stayed asleep during the ransacking if they were not dead.”

“And you only have this so-called Nott’s word for the first part of this episode.”

“Indeed. It is why I am holding him under a charge.”

“So, either Nott killed them—in which case, why? Or someone killed them between him fleeing the room and returning? And the men never woke as they were attacked.”

“It is a conundrum, Sir Joseph. We do not yet have the answer to it.”

“Nor do you know exactly how or why the first man was killed.”

“Indeed.”

“Your job is a difficult one, I think, Harriott.”

“There have been difficult episodes within it, certainly, sir.”

Harriott does not know why he says this. A slight frustration at the relentlessness of Sir Joseph’s questioning, perhaps. He also struggles with how odd it is, conversing with a man who has occupied so many of his thoughts for such a long
time. They share a history, the two of them, deriving from the previous year’s Ratcliffe Highway murders investigation. But neither may mention it, or the way it ended. It is as if a third man sat between them—or a statue, perhaps, covered in a shroud. Banks, who had been staring into his tankard in concentration as Harriott explained the events in Wapping and Rotherhithe, now looks up in surprise and, Harriott sees, some irritation at the impertinence of this magistrate.

“Difficult episodes I am sure,” says Sir Joseph, and his voice is low and somewhat threatening. “We all of us have participated in events which we would not have chosen. But our duty should always be at the front of our minds.”

“Duty, Sir Joseph? I am a man who has had a long and hard attachment to duty.”

“So I am led to understand. And sometimes duty enforces its own silence, when to talk would damage the institutions we seek to preserve.”

“And sometimes silence acts as a seedbed for its own corruption. For if a man be not allowed to speak, he may turn resentful.”

“Do you know of such a man, Harriott?”

“I know only men who know their duty, Sir Joseph. But not all men are the same.”

“Indeed not.”

Banks looks long and hard at him. The charm is still there, dancing in his brow, but it is dancing with a cold and steely partner now.

“What do you need of me, Harriott?”

“I would like to see your records of the
Solander
voyage—any papers on the crew, the contracting of the ship, and correspondence. The more access we have to your records, the greater the chance of establishing some connection between
the three dead men, and perhaps a motivation for their deaths. I would also like my officer Charles Horton to be able to interview the gardeners who went on the voyage. Captain Hopkins has informed him that these men are now in Kew, under your immediate supervision, and it is for you to release them for interview.”

“You shall have all of it. As two men who speak of duty, I would have you understand that I am at your service in this regard.”

“And I would have you understand, Sir Joseph, that I know my duty, however resentful it may occasionally make me.”

“I understand you completely. And now, some brandy?”

“I would be much obliged.”

From Harriott’s left, Aaron Graham, who may have been holding his breath throughout this entire exchange, lets loose a long, audible sigh of relief.

If the universe bears a greater likeness to animal bodies and to vegetables than to the works of human art, it is more probable that its cause resembles the cause of the former than of the latter, and its origin ought rather to be ascribed to generation or vegetation than to reason or design.

David Hume,
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
, 1751

The two young princes—the one of the island, the other of England—climbed ever higher into the center of Tahiti, sweating in the morning sun. The day was still and hot and clear, as all the days had been since the arrival of the English ship. They had been walking for almost an hour, since the prince had met his friend at the point where the thick green forest met the open plantation land down near the sea.

“I have a great surprise for you,” the island prince had said the previous evening. They had been sitting near the Englishman’s tent watching girls dance in the firelight. The Englishman, like all his countrymen, watched the girls hungrily, his eyes half closed, his palms rubbing together as if under their own volition. “Meet me tomorrow morning, and I will show you something which will change the way you think and feel.” The prince had been serious-faced and sober, and his friend had laughed distractedly, his blue eyes dancing along with the girls. This island had already given so much. How could there possibly be yet more?

It had been three weeks since the arrival of the English ship. The men from the northern hemisphere were now well established, their little encampment just above the shoreline a busy conjunction of the island’s different worlds. Prostitutes and fishermen came to sell their wares, desperate as their fathers had been for the iron which the English brought with them. Even the whores could be paid for in nails.

Since their first meeting, the prince and his new friend had spent many hours together, walking and discussing and exploring. The Englishman could not believe how accomplished the prince was with his own language, and took the opportunity to be taught a few island words. The prince had been preparing for this friendship, and the opportunities it brought, for months. He had been trained in the English language by the lonely half-breed, who was shunned by the islanders and had for company only the fierce old missionary who had adopted him.

The half-breed and his stepfather came to the English encampment every day to warn the sailors of the dangers of the island’s syphilitic whores and to offer their redemptive services to the depraved and lost souls of the visitors. To start with, they were ignored. Increasingly, they were verbally abused or even worse. The prince had come across the young half-breed at the back of the beach the previous evening. He had been staring out to sea, tears in his eyes. The prince saw in those eyes the same longing he felt: to be far away from here, over the blue edge of the world, on the way to the northern island paradise of England.

“So, Prince of England. Tell me about your own kingdom,” the prince had said one night, almost a week after their first meeting. The two of them were sitting in a tree, watching the bay of Matavai in which the Englishman’s ship was anchored, surrounded (as it always was) by dozens of the island’s canoes
and fishing boats. The Englishman had laughed, a big delighted laugh. He was no prince, but his savage friend’s little joke enchanted him.