A Burial at Sea Read online

  “What time is it?”

  “Running on four in the morning. It’s through the last door in the wardroom and along a corridor. Hurry, if you please. I’ll leave you this lantern.”

  “Is it Teddy? My nephew, rather, Edmund?”

  “No, no, he’s well. He’ll be asleep in the gun room now.”

  There had been enough middle-of-the-night visitors in Lenox’s past life that he was quick to get ready. He threw on a shirt and braced himself with a splash of water to the face, taken from the small pool left in his washstand. McEwan, in his hammock, slumbered on apace—or seemed to at any rate—and Lenox just managed to squeeze past his bulk and through to the darkened wardroom.

  By contrast the captain’s spacious and well-appointed mess was a blaze of light, with lanterns on their chains swinging from the beam over the dining table. There were two men besides Martin seated at the far end of the table. One was Tradescant, the surgeon, who had a vinegary look on his face. The other was the slender Billings, Martin’s first lieutenant.

  “There you are,” said Martin. “Please, come sit. Take a glass of brandy.”

  “I thank you, no,” said Lenox.

  “You had better,” said Billings, and Lenox saw that his face looked haunted.

  “If you prefer it, then.”

  “There you are.” Billings, who seemed relieved to have some duty, poured Lenox a crystal tumbler full of brandy and slid it down the table to where he was sitting.

  “Plainly something has occurred, gentlemen,” Lenox said, his drink untouched, hands folded before him. “What is it?”

  “You were a detective once?” said Martin.

  “Once.”

  “I mean to say that you retain the … the faculties of an amateur detective.”

  “An intermittently professional one, in fact. But they are corroded by disuse, I assure you. Why do you ask? Mr. Tradescant, I can see the various spots of blood on your cuff—they are fresh, not darkened by washing—I presume you do not wear your nightshirt to see your patients. You have roused me from sleep—from all this I conclude that somebody has been wounded unexpectedly. It only remains to ask whether the person is dead or not.”

  There was a long pause.

  “They are,” said Martin at last. “He is.”

  “Who?”

  “Lieutenant Halifax.”

  After his short speech the onetime detective had felt in control of this tense congregation, but this name knocked the wind out of him. His only friend aboard the Lucy, really. And a good man—kindly hearted—gentle. A gentleman in the old sense of the word. A thought strayed across Lenox’s mind: he hadn’t had time to fish, Halifax, on this last voyage of his life. What a pity. Now he took a sip of that brandy before speaking.

  “When did it happen?”

  Billings answered. “His body was discovered on the quarterdeck fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Discovered!” said Lenox. “Surely it would be impossible to shift a body around—to kill someone—without others knowing about it, on a ship this small? Why, there are two hundred and twenty men aboard the Lucy!”

  Martin gave him a dry glance, as if to indicate that this piece of information was already in his possession, but said nothing.

  It was Billings who spoke again. “It’s the dead of night. Very few men are on deck, and those that are would have been on the poop or about the main deck. He could have been brought from below, I suppose.”

  “Leave the conclusions out,” said Martin. “Mr. Lenox, I’m afraid we must call upon your skills.”

  Rather than acknowledging this request, Lenox said, “Mr. Tradescant, you attempted to resuscitate him, I take it?”

  “I did, after a fashion. That is to say I checked his pulse, though a dunce in medical college could have spotted from fifty yards off there wouldn’t be one, and then checked his breath.”

  Impatiently, Martin said, “Mr. Lenox, we have agreed that you should look into this. I feel certain that whoever did it will come forward—before morning, I would lay odds—but on the off chance that they don’t…”

  “Did Mr. Halifax have any disagreements with the sailors?”

  “Mr. Billings, perhaps you can answer that.”

  “On the contrary, though he had only been here for several months he seemed quite popular. Occasionally they’ll take advantage of someone—someone—well, Faxxie wasn’t soft, exactly, but he wasn’t the martinet that some lieutenants might be. He had a reputation as a very capable gentleman at sea, though, which the men seemed to understand and value. I would have called him beloved, in fact. Certainly more than Carrow or I.”

  “That squares with what I observed,” said Martin.

  “Then there’s nobody likely to have borne him ill will?”

  “Not for more than a passing moment. No.”

  Lenox pondered this. “And of course,” he said, half to himself, “if someone bore a grudge why not kill him in Plymouth?”

  “What can that mean?” asked Martin sharply

  “On shore they would have had six weeks to do the job. The ship is in effect a closed room. Impossible to flee, should you be discovered. It’s peculiar, I’ll say that. Did you take many new men on board for this voyage? Someone who might be violent?”

  “Only two.”

  “Two! Is that all? Out of two hundred odd?”

  “Yes. A new lieutenant, our fifth, Lee, and a new forecastleman, Hardy. Both, I can assure you, came with unimpeachable references.”

  “I thought there was tremendous turnover on a ship of this sort.”

  “In others, perhaps, but there is no war on at the moment,” said Martin, “which means there are more men than places, and the Lucy is a remarkably steady sailor. And then, I have something of a reputation for taking prizes.”

  This made sense: to take a prize, an enemy ship, meant that everyone on board got in various proportions some reward of the prize money. It was an incentive to courage, and indeed an incentive to sail with the navy. A good prize for a common sailor might have meant enough money to buy a small cottage or open a public house, while for a captain it would be enough money to buy a splendid estate on a hundred acres in the countryside.

  Lenox forced himself to focus.

  “Who found the body?”

  “Carrow. He was on duty.”

  With a lurch in his stomach Lenox remembered that Teddy would have been, too. “Were there any witnesses?”

  “From what Carrow says, no. There was a loud thump on the quarterdeck, which might have been the murder itself, and he went to look at what had caused it after several moments. The quarterdeck would have been hidden from his view, you see. When he went to look he found the body.”

  “And so it was Carrow who came to fetch you, Captain?”

  “He came to me first,” said Tradescant. “I ran up on deck. The captain followed shortly thereafter.”

  Martin nodded his confirmation of this sequence of events. “I called for Billings, then. We agreed to find you.”

  “Mr. Tradescant, how long had Halifax been dead when you saw him? You said a dunce in medical college could have spotted that he was?”

  “Five minutes, I would say, just to hazard a guess. Not more than ten or twelve. His skin was still as warm as yours or mine. And his heart was still hot to the touch.”

  There was a moment of quiet at this news.

  “But how on earth could you know that, about his heart?” said Lenox. “Did you perform an autopsy so soon?”

  The three men—Martin, Billings, and Tradescant—exchanged looks.

  “No,” said the captain at last. “We found him on his back, cut open straight down the middle from his throat to his stomach, and the skin pulled back so that you could see his entrails.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  To have a preference among types of murder was absurd, of course—grotesque even—but Lenox had always had a particular distaste for death by the knife. Gunshot, strangulation, poisoning: for reasons hidden even t
o him, none of these seemed quite as grim as a stabbing or a cutting. Somehow the image of Halifax meeting such an end made everything worse.

  He stood. “Good Christ. Let me see him then. Is his body alone? We must go at once if it is, before anyone can interfere with it.”

  “No, no, Carrow is standing over him,” said Billings. “Nobody else has been permitted close to the body—Halifax’s body—or indeed the quarterdeck, besides the three of us and Carrow. Though I’m afraid several seamen saw the body.”

  Martin stood. “You’ll do it then, Mr. Lenox? If nobody comes forward, you’ll find the man who did this?”

  “I could scarcely do anything else.”

  They climbed up to the main deck. A cool breeze there just ruffled the otherwise slack sails.

  “Why aren’t we sailing?” he asked.

  “We need to beat to windward,” said Martin, “but that takes men, and I wanted to keep the deck as clear of people as possible. We’re simply drifting at the moment.”

  “I see. Out of curiosity, what’s the nearest port?”

  “London, I would imagine, perhaps Whistable. Why?”

  “In case we need to seek help on land.”

  The captain shook his head. “No. We have our own ways in the navy, sir, and we may try and convict a man of a crime as legitimately here as they might in the assizes.”

  “Hm.”

  “We’re not putting into port, with all due respect. I won’t go back there tail-tucked, a man who can’t control his own ship.”

  “Very well. Let’s see poor Halifax, then.”

  The quarterdeck of the Lucy (domain solely of officers) was one level up from the main deck and the poop deck was one level up from that, but each had a separate set of stairs leading to it from the main deck. This left the quarterdeck invisible in parts from the others, just as Martin had said, particularly where the poop deck’s rail blocked off from sight the back half of the quarterdeck. It would be just possible, then, to do something out of sight of both the main deck and the poop deck at once. Still, it seemed improbable somehow that a man could be murdered within ten feet of a half-dozen other men without attracting attention.

  “When was Halifax’s watch?” said Lenox as they walked single file up the quarterdeck.

  “First watch,” said Billings.

  “Eight in the evening until midnight, I take it?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s past four now,” Martin added, “but we’re letting the next watch stay down. The fewer people see this the better.”

  Lenox nodded. “What I was asking, though—Halifax wouldn’t have had any reason to be outside of his cabin at the hour he was killed?”

  Billings and Martin both shook their heads. No.

  They came to the body; it was under a smallish piece of spare white sailcloth, presumably out of respect, though Lenox would have preferred the scene to rest untouched. Uneven splotches of red had started to seep into the canvas. Worse still, Halifax’s shins and knees protruded from the covering. It seemed somehow undignified.

  “Carrow,” said Martin, “any activity?”

  “Nobody has been on deck, sir, but I’ve heard the men speaking. They know Halifax is dead.”

  “Inevitably,” said Martin. “Mr. Lenox, what shall we do?”

  “Perhaps you and I, Mr. Tradescant, could take a look.”

  They stepped up toward the body, Lenox treading carefully so that neither man put his foot on any piece of evidence, and removed the sailcloth. There he was. The moon was just waning, but it was still full enough to cast in a brilliant white light every gory detail of Halifax’s death.

  “Unfortunate sod,” murmured Martin.

  Billings took off his cap and soon all four men besides Lenox had done the same. He was bareheaded.

  Halifax’s face was unmarked, but his torso was mangled out of all recognition, soaked in blood. Still, it was evident what the murderer had done; Halifax was indeed sliced open from his throat to his navel, and the skin had been pulled neatly back into flaps, revealing an exposed rectangle of his insides.

  “Jesus,” said Carrow, and both Martin and Billings looked as if they might be ill. Only Tradescant, a medical man, remained phlegmatic. And of course Lenox, who had seen this kind of thing before.

  “Well, Mr. Lenox?”

  The detective didn’t answer. He was stooped down by the body. Very gingerly he turned Halifax’s head one way and then the other, looking for any signs of violence upon it.

  “He’s bare-chested,” said Lenox.

  “Yes,” said Billings.

  “Well, and that’s your most important detail. Would he have come onto deck bare-chested?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Then where is his shirt? You see?” Lenox thought for a moment. “Mr. Tradescant, you observed the repeated stab wounds around Mr. Halifax’s heart?”

  “Yes.”

  “The stabbing and the subsequent—well, dissection—were different acts.”

  “Yes, I thought the same.”

  “If he was stabbed with his shirt on, there will be fibers of cloth in the wounds. I suspect that’s what we’ll find.” Kneeling still, he turned to Martin. “Captain, if you find that shirt you’ll find your murderer. Unless it’s gone overboard.”

  Martin whirled around and looked down at the main deck, where a few sailors leaned against the gunwales. “We can still check every damned inch of this ship. You, Harding—yes, you—spread word among each mess that nothing is to be shipped out through the portholes or over the sides of the ship, hey?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Harding, a strong man of middle age, and went below deck.

  “There are a million places aboard a ship to hide such a thing,” said Lenox. “It’s a shame.”

  “You would be surprised,” said Martin. “If it’s here we’ll find it.”

  “What color would it be?”

  “His light blue shirt, I imagine,” said Billings. “A rough old thing—he wore it when he was off duty.”

  There was a pause as all five men contemplated Halifax’s corpse. The ship pitched slightly.

  “Mr. Tradescant, is there somewhere you and I could examine the body in greater detail?” said Lenox.

  The captain spoke up. “How many are resident in the surgery?” he asked.

  “Only one, sir. An able seamen named Costigan took a smack to the head from a flying spar. He’s sleeping it off under sedation.”

  “Then clear a table there. We’ll bring the body down.”

  “If the three of you could do that,” said Lenox, “I might inspect the area and then follow you down. Where is the surgery?”

  Tradescant told him, and then hurried down to ready a table. Carrow, Billings, and Martin—to his credit—all helped wrap Halifax’s body in the sailcloth and begin the arduous work of transferring its bulk down below deck.

  Lenox stood in the moonlight for a moment after they had gone, looking out at the water.

  It was strange. Though his primary feelings were of sorrow for his friend Halifax and alarm at the nature of the murder, he had to admit to himself that in some recess of his mind he was excited by the prospect of a proper case. It was one of those facts he would never have told a soul, but which it was useless to deny to himself.

  He missed this work. Had missed it every day at first, when he entered Parliament three years before, and then every other day, and finally once a week, once a month …

  Much of his work he had passed onto his protégé, Lord John Dallington. Their weekly meetings about those cases, often held over supper in some public house or gentlemen’s club, full of animated speculation and intense parsing of clues, comprised Lenox’s favorite hours of the week. How he missed the chase! Life in politics was absorbing, remarkably absorbing, but it never inspired in him the same feeling of vocation that being a detective had: that this was his purpose on earth not from sense of duty and ambition, like Parliament, but from instinct and preference. He knew he would nev
er be as good at anything as he had been at being a detective. Sacrificing that had been painful. The profession had brought him no honor—had in fact discredited him in the eyes of many of his caste as a fool—but what pleasure it had given him! To be on the trail!

  So part of him couldn’t help but revel in this opportunity. No doubt someone would come forward, but if they didn’t … well, it was impossible to call in Dallington or the Yard here. This was a chance to live again what had once given him such keen happiness and focus, and which he thought he had given up for good.

  CHAPTER TEN

  He stooped down to look at the spot where Halifax’s body had lain.

  There was a great deal of blood that had spilled out from him, but it had left unmarked a patch of the deck that roughly conformed to the man’s shape. Lenox stepped into this area so that he could survey the deck more easily.

  As he stepped over the blood and into this clearing he heard a creak underfoot. He looked down and realized that the board he had stepped onto had a deep crack through its middle. The exposed wood looked to Lenox’s eye raw and unweathered, unvarnished by time—newly splintered—and knowing that the ship had just come out of repairs he felt sure that it was a fresh fissure. But from what?

  A first puzzle.

  The blood was coagulating thickly on the quarterdeck. He took a small ebony stick out of his pocket, roughly the size of a twig, like a smaller version of a conductor’s baton. It was intended to be a line marker for use while reading, but in fact Lenox had never used it after its proper fashion. He only carried it because Lady Jane had bought it for him, many years before.

  Now he used it to drag through the blood, looking for any objects that might have been left behind, hidden in that maroon murk. Nothing was apparent to the naked eye, and on his first trawl he found nothing. Still, he decided to try it again and the second time came upon a small object he had missed before. It was roughly the size and shape of a coin.

  He took his handkerchief out of his pocket and deposited the object in its center, then folded it carefully and put it in his pocket for later inspection. Then he spent ten minutes or so looking over the area very carefully again, though without finding anything.