The Wreck of the Mary Deare

CHAPTER ONE

The formal enquiry into the loss of the Mary Deare was finally fixed for Monday, May 3rd, at Southampton. For a Ministry of Transport Enquiry, this must be considered unusually expeditious, but I learned later that the date had been brought forward at the urgent request of the insurance companies. The sum involved was a very large one and right from the start it was the question of insurance that was the vital factor.

In fact, we had only been in Lymington a few days when I had a visit from a Mr F. T. Snetterton representing the H. B. & K. M. Insurance Corporation of San Francisco. It was that section of the cargo consigned by the Hsu Trading Corporation of Singapore that interested him. Could I testify as to the nature of it? Had I been down into any of the holds? Had Patch talked to me about it?

There was a devil of a racket going on. Sea Witch had just been slipped and the yard men were drawing keel bolts for inspection and Mike and I were stripping the old engine out of her. I took him down to the waterfront, where we could talk in peace.

'You understand, Mr Sands,' he explained earnestly, 'I have to be sure that the cargo was exactly what the Hsu Trading Corporation claim. I have to establish the manifest, as it were. Now surely you must have seen something that would enable you to give an opinion as to the nature of the cargo? Think, sir. Think.' He was leaning forward, blinking in the bright sunshine, quite over-wrought by the urgency of his problem.

I told him I had been down the inspection hatch of Number Three hold. I described the charred bales to him. 'Please, Mr Sands.' He shook his head impatiently. 'It's the aero engines I am interested in. Only the aero engines.'

That was the first time anyone had mentioned aero engines to me. 'I heard she had a cargo of explosives.'

'No, no — aero engines.' He sat down on the railing of one of the pontoons where the boats were laid up, a neat, dapper man dressed in black with a brief-case. He looked entirely out of place. 'The ship herself,' he said in his precise way, 'is not important — twice the break-up value, that's all. And the cotton was insured by a Calcutta firm. No, it's the aero engines we're worried about. There were a hundred and forty-eight of them — surplus American stores from the Korean war — and they were insured for £296,000. I must be certain that they were on board at the time the ship went down.'

'What makes you think they weren't?' I asked him.

He looked at me quickly, hesitating and fidgeting with his brief-case. 'It's a little difficult,' he murmured. 'But perhaps — since you're not an interested party… perhaps if I explain, it may help you to remember something — some little thing… an unguarded word, perhaps.' He looked at me again, and then said, 'Shortly after the claim was filed, we heard from our agent in Aden that a man named Adams had been talking about the Mary Deare and her cargo in a Steamer Point bar. He was reported to have given it as his opinion that she contained nothing but bales of cotton at the time she went down.' And he added hastily, 'You understand, sir, this is in the strictest confidence.' And then he asked me again whether I couldn't remember some little detail that would help him. 'Surely- if you were on that ship for forty-eight hours you must have learned something about the cargo?'

There was a gale blowing,' I said. 'The ship was sinking.'

'Yes, yes, of course. But you must have talked with Mr Patch. You were with him through a critical period. A man will often say things in those circumstances that he would be reluctant…' He let the sentence go, staring at me all the time through his glasses. 'You're sure he said nothing about the cargo?'

'Quite sure.'

'A pity!' he murmured. 'I had thought…' He shrugged his shoulders and stood up. I asked him then how he thought it was possible for a cargo consigned to a ship not to be on board her at a later date? He looked at me. 'All things are possible, Mr Sands, where a great deal of money is involved.' I remembered Patch saying the same thing about the loss of the Belle Isle. And then he suddenly asked me whether Patch had mentioned the name of another boat whilst we were together on the Mary Deare?

'I don't think so,' I said quickly. If Snetterton wanted to find out about the Belle Isle, he could find it out from somebody else.

But he wasn't to be put off so easily. 'You don't think so?' He was peering at me. 'I want you to be quite certain about this, Mr Sands. It may be vitally important.'

'I am quite certain,' I said irritably.

'Mr Patch never mentioned the name of another ship to you?'

Damn it, the man had no right to come here questioning me about what Patch had said. No, I told him. And I added that if he wanted to find out what ships Patch had been connected with why the devil didn't he go and ask him.

He stared at me. 'This isn't a ship that Mr Patch ever sailed in.'

'Well, what ship is it then?'

'The Torre Annunziata. Now please think back very carefully. Did Mr Patch ever mention the name Torre Annunziata to you?'

'No,' I said. 'Definitely not.' I felt relieved and angry. 'What's the Torre Annunziata got to do with it?'

He hesitated. 'It's a little delicate, you understand… so much supposition. .' Then he suddenly made up his mind and said, 'The Dellimare Company owned only two ships — the Mary Deare and the Torre Annunziata. The Torre Annunziata was in the Rangoon River at the same time that the Mary Deare put in to load her cotton cargo.' He glanced at his watch and then rose to his feet. 'Well, sir, I won't trouble you any further for the moment.'

He turned then and began to walk back towards the slip, and as we negotiated the wooden duck-boards of the pontoons, he said, 'I'll be quite honest with you. This is a matter that might in certain circumstances. .' He hesitated there and seemed to change his mind. 'I am waiting for a report now from our agent in Rangoon. But. .' He shook his head. 'It is all very disturbing, Mr Sands. The Torre Annunziata has been sold to the Chinese. She has vanished behind what I believe is called the Bamboo Curtain — not only the ship, but her crew as well. And Adams has disappeared, too. We are almost certain that he shipped out in a dhow bound for Zanzibar. It may be weeks before we can contact him. And then there are these two fires on the Mary Deare and the loss of Mr Dellimare. A fire in the radio room is most unusual, and Mr Dellimare had been in the Navy. The possibility of suicide. . small firm, you know. . might be in difficulties. .' He tucked his brief-case more firmly under his arm. 'You see what I mean, Mr Sands. Little things in themselves, but together…' He glanced at me significantly. And then he added, 'The trouble is the time factor. The H. B. & K. M. are making great efforts to increase their business in the Pacific. And Mr Hsu is a big man in Singapore — considerable influence in Eastern ports. They feel it calls for prompt settlement of the claim unless…' He shrugged.

We had reached the slip and he paused for a moment to admire Sea Witch's lines, asking questions about our diving plans, the aqualungs we were using and the depths at which we could work. He seemed genuinely interested and I explained how we had financed ourselves by salvaging bits and pieces from the wreck of a tanker in the Mediterranean and that we were now going to work on the wreck of an L.C.T. in Worbarrow Bay off the Dorset coast. He wished us luck and gave me his card. 'Think about what I've said, Mr Sands. If you remember anything — well, you have my card, sir.'

It was only after Snetterton had gone — when I had had time to think over what he had told me — that I began to understand what the loss of the Mary Deare was going to lead to. There would be other people besides Snetterton coming to ask me questions. He was just the breeze before the storm. The newspaper reports I had read had all taken it for granted that the ship was sunk — so had Snetterton and the two reporters who had come to see me when I had arrived with Sea Witch. Everybody thought she was sunk. But sooner or later they would start probing, and before then I had to see Patch and find out his reasons for concealing her position.

I thought it must be connected in some way with his past record and when I was in London two days later to sign our salvage contract with the underwriters, I made a few enquiries about the Belle Isle. She had been wrecked on the Anambas Islands northeast of Singapore nearly ten years ago, and she was entered in the records as a 'total loss'. Her master was given as Gideon S. Patch. An Enquiry had been held in Singapore and the Court had found the stranding to be due to default of the master and had suspended his Certificate for a period of five years. That was all. There were no details. But, discussing it with one of my friends in the marine section of Lloyd's, who specialised in the Far East, I learned that some ugly rumours had got about afterwards to the effect that the stranding had been a put-up job. The ship had been very heavily insured.

I was very close to St Mary Axe and I decided to have a look at the Dellimare Company office. It was partly that I was curious to see the sort of company it was, and also I wanted to find out where I could contact Patch. Their offices were at the Houndsditch end, on the fourth floor of a dingy building full of small trading businesses. I found myself in a poky little room with a desk and a gas fire and some filing cabinets. The single typewriter had its cover on and dirt-grimed windows looked out across a litter of chimney pots to the white-tiled rear of a big office block. There was a bell on the counter and amongst a litter of papers was some Dellimare Company note-paper. It gave the directors as J. C. B. Dellimare, Hans Gundersen and A. Petrie. When I rang the bell, the door of an inner office was opened and a full-bosomed, fleshy-looking woman appeared, dressed in black with a lot of cheap jewellery and blonde hair that was startling because it was clearly natural.

When I gave her my name, she said, 'Oh, are you the Mr Sands who was on board the Mary Deare? Then perhaps you can help me.' She took me through into the other office. It was a much brighter room with cream walls and a red carpet and a big green and chromium steel desk that was littered with Press clippings, mostly from French newspapers. 'I'm trying to find out what really happened to him,' she said. 'To Mr Dellimare, that is.' And she glanced involuntarily at a big photograph in an ornate silver frame that stood beside her on the desk. It was a head and shoulders portrait, showing a rather hard, deeply lined face with a small straight mouth under the thin pencil-line of a moustache.

'You knew him well?' I asked.

'Oh, yes. We formed the Company. Of course, after Mr Gundersen joined, it was all different. Our main office became Singapore. Mr Dellimare and I just looked after the London end.' There was something entirely personal about the way she said 'Mr Dellimare and I', and after that she began asking me questions. Had Captain Patch said anything to me about how Mr Dellimare had been lost? Did I go into his cabin? Had I talked to any of the survivors? 'He had been in the Navy. He couldn't just have gone overboard like that?' Her voice trembled slightly.

But when she realised I could tell her nothing that she didn't already know, she lost interest in me. I asked her then for Patch's address, but she hadn't got it. 'He came in about three days ago to deliver his report,' she said. 'He's coming back on Friday, when he'll be able to see Mr Gundersen.' I gave her the address of the boatyard and asked her to tell Patch to contact me, and then I left. She came with me to the door. 'I'll tell Mr Gundersen you've been,' she said with a quick, brittle smile. 'I'm sure he'll be interested.'

Mr Gundersen! Perhaps it was the inflection of her voice, but I got the impression that she was a little nervous of him, as though he were entirely remote from the Dellimare Company office that she knew with its silver-framed photograph and its view over the chimneys.

It never occurred to me that I should meet Gundersen, but on Friday afternoon the boy from the yard's office came down to the slip to say that a Mrs Petrie was calling me from London. I recognised the slightly husky voice at once. Mr Gundersen had just arrived by plane from Singapore and would like to have a talk with me. He was coming down to Southampton tomorrow, would it be convenient for him to call on me at the yard at eleven o'clock?

I couldn't refuse. The man had come all the way from Singapore and he was entitled to find out all he could about the loss of the Company's ship. But, remembering the things Snetterton had hinted at, I had a feeling of uneasiness. Also, my time and all my energies were concentrated on the conversion of Sea Witch and I resented anything which took my mind off the work that Mike and I had planned and struggled for over years of wreck-hunting. I was worried, too, about what I was going to tell him. How was I to explain to him that nobody had been notified of the position of the wreck?

And then early next morning Patch came on the phone from London. No, they hadn't given him any message from me. I thought then that he was ringing me about the package I had brought over for him and which I realised was still on board, locked away in my brief-case. But it wasn't that. It was about Gundersen. Had Gundersen been to see me? And when I told him that I was expecting him at eleven o'clock, he said, 'Thank God! I tried to get you last night — to warn you.' And then he added, 'You haven't told anybody where the Mary Deare is lying, have you?'

'No,' I said. 'Not yet.' I hadn't told anybody, not even Mike.

'Has a man called Snetterton been to see you — a marine insurance agent?'

'Yes.'

'You didn't tell him?'

'No,' I said. 'He didn't ask me. He presumed the ship was sunk.' And then I said, 'Haven't you notified the authorities yet? If you haven't, I think it's time—'

'Listen,' he said. 'I can't come down now. I've got to see somebody. And on Monday I've got to go to the Ministry of Transport. But I'll be able to come down and see you on Tuesday. Will you promise to say nothing until then?'

'But why?' I said. 'What's the point in concealing her position?'

'I'll explain when I see you.'

'And what about Gundersen? What am I to say to him?'

'Say anything you like. But for God's sake don't tell him where she is. Don't tell anybody. I ask you as a favour, Sands.'

'All right,' I said doubtfully.

He thanked me then and rang off.

An hour later Gundersen arrived. The boy came down to say that he was waiting for me in the yard manager's office. A big chauffeur-driven limousine stood outside and I went in to find Gundersen seated on the edge of the desk smoking a cigarette and the manager standing in front of him in uneasy silence. 'You're Mr Sands, are you?' Gundersen asked. He didn't offer me his hand or get up or make any move. The manager gave us the use of his office and slipped out. As soon as the door was shut Gundersen said, 'You know why I'm here, I imagine?' He waited until I had nodded and then said, 'I saw Mr Patch yesterday. I understand you were with him during the last forty-eight hours on the Mary Deare. Naturally I wanted to hear your version of what happened on our ship.' He asked me then to go through the whole sequence of events. 'I want every detail, please, Mr Sands.'

I went through the whole story for him, leaving out only the details about Patch's behaviour and what had happened at the end. He listened in complete silence, not interrupting once. His long, immobile face, tanned by the sun, showed no flicker of expression, and his eyes, behind their horn-rimmed glasses, watched me all the time I was talking.

Afterwards he asked me a series of questions — straightforward, practical questions concerning course and wind strength and the length of time we had run the engines. The ordeal we had gone through seemed to mean nothing to him and I got the impression of a cold personality.

Finally, he said, 'I don't think you have yet understood, Mr Sands, what it is I wish to know.' His slight accent was more noticeable now. 'I want to discover the exact position in which the ship went down.'

'You don't seem to realise the conditions prevailing at the time,' I said. 'All I can tell you is that she was close to the Roches Douvres at the time I boarded her.'

He got up then. He was very tall and he wore a light-coloured suit of smooth material draped in the American fashion. 'You are not being very helpful, Mr Sands.' A signet ring on his finger flashed in the pale April sunlight. 'It seems odd that neither you nor Patch can say where the ship was at the time you abandoned her.' He waited, and then he said, 'I have also talked to Higgins. He may not have a Master's Certificate, but he's an experienced seaman. You may be interested to know that his calculations, based on wind strength, probable drift and tide, put the Mary Deare's final position a good deal to the east of where you and Patch seem to think you were. Have you any comment to make?' He stood facing me, his back to the window.

'None,' I said, nettled and a little angry at his manner. And then, because he was still staring at me, waiting, I said, 'I'd remind you, Mr Gundersen, that I am not concerned in this. I was on board your ship by accident.'

He didn't answer for a moment. Finally he said, 'That remains, perhaps, to be seen.' And he added, 'Well, at least I have got something out of you. Now that we have some idea of the length of time the engines were running and the course steered whilst they were in use, it should be possible to arrive at an approximation of the position.' He paused again. 'Is there anything further you would care to add to what you have already told me, Mr Sands?'

'No,' I said. 'Nothing.'

'Very well.' He picked up his hat. And then he paused. 'The manager here tells me that you're interested in salvage. You've formed a company — Sands, Duncan & Company, Ltd.' He stared at me. 'I think I should warn you that this man Patch has a bad record. Unfortunately our Mr Dellimare was inexperienced in matters connected with shipping. He employed this man when nobody else would, and the result has proved disastrous.'

'He did his best to save the ship,' I said angrily.

For the first time his face moved. An eyebrow lifted. 'After he had caused the crew to panic and take to the boats. I have yet to discover his precise motives, but if you're mixed up in this, Mr Sands…' He put his hat on. 'You can contact me at the Savoy Hotel if you should find you have some further information to give me.' He went out of the office then and I watched him drive away with an uneasy feeling that I was getting myself dangerously involved.

This feeling persisted, and it came between me and my work so that I was not in a particularly sympathetic mood when Patch finally arrived. We were living on board Sea Witch by then, which was fortunate because he didn't arrive until the evening. I had expected him to look rested, the lines in his face smoothed out. It came as a shock to me to find him looking just as haggard. We had only one light on board, an inspection lamp clamped to a half-erected bulkhead, and in its harsh glare he looked ghastly, his face quite white and a nervous tic at the corner of his mouth.

We cleared the saloon table of tools and wood-shavings, and I sat him down and gave him a drink and a cigarette and introduced him to Mike. It was neat rum I gave him and he knocked it straight back, and he drew on his cigarette as though it were the first he'd had in days. His suit was old and frayed and I remember wondering whether the Dellimare Company had paid him. Oddly enough, he accepted Mike at once and, without attempting to get me alone, asked straight out what Gundersen had wanted, what he had said.

I told him, and when I had finished, I said, 'Gundersen suspects something. He hinted as much.' I paused, waiting for the explanation he had promised me. But all he said was, 'I'd forgotten that Higgins might work it out.' He was speaking to himself.

'What about that explanation?' I asked him.

'Explanation?' He stared at me blankly.

'You surely don't imagine,' I said, 'that I can be a party to a piece of deception that involves the owners, the insurance people, everybody with a financial interest in the ship, unless I know that there is some good reason?' I told him I considered that my duty was clear. 'Either you explain why you've withheld this vital information or I go to the authorities.' An obstinate, shut look had come over his face. 'Why pretend the ship went down, when at any moment she may be sighted lying there in the middle of the Minkies?'

'She could have been carried there by the tides,' he murmured.

'She could have been, but she wasn't.' I lit a cigarette and sat down opposite him. He looked so desperately tired of it all. 'Listen,' I said more gently. 'I've been trained in marine insurance. I know the procedure after the loss of a ship. Any moment now the Receiver of Wreck will start taking depositions under oath from everybody connected with the loss.

And under oath I've no alternative but to give the full—'

'You won't be called on to make a deposition,' he said quickly. 'You weren't connected with the ship.'

'No, but I was on board.'

'By accident.' He pushed his hand up through his hair in a gesture that brought it all back to me. 'It's not for you to make any comment.'

'No, but if I have to make a statement under oath…' I leaned across the table towards him. 'Try and see it from my point of view,' I said. 'You made me a certain proposition that day in Paimpol. A proposition which, in the light of your failure to notify the owners of the present whereabouts of the ship, was entirely crooked. And Gundersen is beginning to think—'

'Crooked?' He began laughing and there was a note of hysteria in his voice. 'Do you know what cargo the Mary Deare carried?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Aero engines. Snetterton told me.'

'And did he tell you that the other Dellimare ship was moored next to the Mary Deare for four days in the Rangoon River? Those aero engines are in China now — sold to the Chinks for a mint of money.'

The positiveness of his accusation took me by surprise. 'How can you be certain?' I asked him.

He looked at me, hesitating for a moment. 'All right. I'll tell you. Because Dellimare offered me five thousand quid to wreck the Mary Deare. Cash — in fivers.'

In the sudden silence I could hear the lapping of the water at the bottom of the slip. 'Dellimare? Are you serious?' I asked.

'Yes, Dellimare.' His voice was angry and bitter. 'It was after old Taggart died. Dellimare was desperate then. He had to improvise. And, by the luck of the devil, I was on board. He knew my record. He thought he could buy me.' He leaned back and lit another cigarette, his hands shaking. 'Sometimes I wish to God I'd accepted his offer.'

I poured him another drink. And then I said, 'But I still don't understand why you should conceal the Mary Deare's position. Why haven't you told all this to the authorities?'

He turned and looked at me. 'Because if Gundersen knows where she is, he'll go out there and destroy her.'

That was nonsense, of course. You can't destroy a 6,000-ton ship just like that. I told him so. He'd only got to go to the authorities, demand an examination of the vessel and the whole thing would be decided. But he shook his head. 'I have to go back myself — with somebody like you that I can trust.'

'You mean you're not sure about what you just told me — about the cargo?'

He didn't say anything for a moment, but just sat there, hunched over his drink, smoking. You could feel his nerves in the stillness of the cabin. 'I want you to take me out there,' he said finally. 'You and Duncan.' He turned, leaning towards us. 'You've been in marine insurance, haven't you, Sands? You know how to fix up a salvage contract. Now listen. When will your boat be ready?'

'Not till the end of the month,' Mike said, and the way he said it was a warning to me that he didn't want to have anything to do with it.

'All right. The end of the month. I'll come back then. Have you got an underwater camera?' And when I nodded he leaned forward earnestly. 'You could take a picture then of the damage to the for'ard holds. The insurance people would give you a lot of money for that — and for pictures of the cargo.' And then he added, 'And if I'm wrong, then there's quarter of a million pounds worth of aero engines — enough salvage to set you up in a big way. Well?' His eyes moved quickly, nervously, from one to the other of us.

'You know very well I can't agree to a proposition like that,' I said. And Mike added, 'I think you should put the whole matter in the hands of the authorities.'

'No. No, I can't do that.'

'Why not?' I asked.

'Because I can't;' The tension was building up in him again. 'Because I'm up against a company. I've a record behind me and they'll twist things… I've been through all this before.' Sweat was shining in beads on his forehead. 'And there's Higgins and the crew. Everything is against me.'

'But if the Receiver of Wreck made an examination—'

'I tell you, No. I'm not having the Receiver of Wreck out there — or anybody.' He was staring at me wildly. 'Can't you understand — I've got to go back there myself.'

'No, I can't,' I said. 'If you refused Dellimare's offer, you've nothing to worry about. Why conceal the fact that you beached her on the Minkies?' And when he didn't answer, I said, 'Why do you have to go back? What the devil is there on that ship that you've got to go back for?'

'Nothing. Nothing.' His voice quivered in tune with his nerves.

'Yes there is,' I said. 'There's something drawing you back to her as though—'

'There's nothing,' he shouted at me.

'Then why not tell the authorities where she is? What is it you're afraid of?'

His fist crashed down on the table top. 'Stop it! Questions… questions… nothing but questions. I've had enough of it, do you hear?' He got abruptly to his feet and stood, staring down at us. He was trembling all over.

I think he was on the verge of telling us something. I think he wanted to tell us. But instead he seemed to get a grip of himself. 'Then you won't take me out there?' There was a note of resignation in his voice.

'No,' I said.

He seemed to accept that and he stood there, his body slack, staring down at the table. I got him to sit down again and gave him another drink. He stayed on to supper. He was very quiet and he didn't talk much. I didn't get anything more out of him. He seemed shut away inside himself. When he left he gave me his address. He was in lodgings in London. He said he'd come down at the end of the month and see if we'd changed our minds. I saw him out across the darkened yard and then walked slowly back through the dark shapes of the slipped boats.

'Poor devil!' Mike said, as I went below again. 'Do you think Dellimare really offered him five thousand to wreck the ship?'

'God knows!' I said. I didn't know what to think. It seemed to me that perhaps Patch might be a psychological case — a man whose balance had been destroyed because of the ship he had lost before. 'I know almost nothing about the man,' I murmured. But that wasn't true. You can't live through what we'd lived through together without knowing a good deal about a man. He was tough. He had great reserves. And I admired him. I almost wished I'd agreed to take him out to the Minkies — just to discover the truth. I told Mike the whole story then, all the little details I'd left out when I rejoined Sea Witch in Peter Port. And after I had finished, he said, 'It's a hell of a situation for him if the cargo really has been switched.'

I knew what he meant. He was thinking of the insurance companies, and, having worked for seven years in the marine section of Lloyd's, I knew very well that once they got their teeth into a claim, they'd never let go.

I worried a lot about this during the fitting out. But a few days after Patch had visited us, I received notification of the date of the Formal Investigation and I comforted myself with the thought that it would all be resolved then.

Sea Witch was ready sooner than we had dared to hope. We sailed on Tuesday, April 27, motoring down to the Solent and then heading westward under full canvas with a light northerly wind. I hadn't seen Patch again, but I couldn't help thinking that the wind was fair for the Channel Islands. Twenty-four hours' sailing would have taken us to the Minkies, and the forecast couldn't have been better — continental weather with a belt of high pressure over the Azores. We had Mike's old diving friend, Ian Baird, with us again, and with three of us working we could have got into the Mary Deare's holds and checked that cargo and still got back for the Investigation. And as Sea Witch leaned to the breeze, her new sails gleaming white in the sunlight, I felt none of the elation that I should have felt at the start of this venture that Mike and I had dreamed about for so long.

The devil of it was that, now I was at sea, I remembered things I had forgotten in the bustle of fitting out. Patch had saved my life and, though he hadn't referred to it that night he had come to see us at Lymington, I could remember the desperation that had prompted him to remind me of it in Paimpol. I had the sense of a debt owed, but not paid.

It wasn't only that I felt I had failed in an obligation. Sitting there, with my hands on the wheel, feeling the ship lift to the swell and hearing the water creaming past, I wondered whether it wasn't fear that was directing my course west towards Worbarrow Bay, instead of south to the Minkies. I had seen the Plateau des Minquiers in bad conditions, and deep down in my heart I knew I was scared of the place.

And the irony of it was that for four days we dived in Worbarrow Bay in conditions that were as perfect as I have ever seen them in the Channel — clear blue skies and a calm sea ruffled by only the slightest of breezes. The only limiting factor was the coldness of the water which affected us after a time, even though we were using our heaviest foam rubber suits. In those four days we located and buoyed the wreck of the LCT, cut through into the engine-room and cleared the way for lifting out the main engines, work that we had feared might take anything up to a month.

In the same time, if I had had the nerve to take the gamble, we could have cut our way into each of the Mary Deare's holds. I thought about it sometimes as I worked down in the green depths with Sea Witch's hull a dark shape in the translucent sea above me, and at night the tally of the day's work seemed a reproach and I turned into my bunk in a mood of depression.

It was almost with relief that I woke on the Sunday to a grey dawn misted with rain and a forecast that announced a deep depression over the Atlantic moving eastward. By midday the seas were beginning to break; we got the anchors up and plugged it on the engine against a strong westerly wind for the shelter of Lulworth Cove.

I left early next morning for Southampton. It was stormy, and the downland hills, that crooked chalk fingers round the natural lagoon of the cove, were a gloomy green, shrouded in curtains of driving rain. Big seas piled up in the narrow entrance, filling the cove with an ugly swell, which broke in a roar on the shingle beach. Gusts of wind funnelled into the cove from the tops of the downs, flattening the water in sudden, violent swirls. Nobody was about. The whole chalk basin — so regular in its circle that it might have been the flooded crater of an extinct volcano — was deserted. There was only Sea Witch, rolling heavily, and the gulls, like scraps of paper, whirled about by the wind.

'Better set an anchor watch if it gets any worse,' I told Mike as he rowed me ashore. 'It's not very good holding ground here.'

He nodded, his face unnaturally solemn under his sou'wester. 'What are you going to do if things go against him at this Enquiry?' he asked.

'Nothing,' I replied and my voice sounded peevish against the blatter of the wind. I was tired. I think we were both pretty tired. We had been diving hard for four days. 'If I'd been going to do anything,' I added, 'the time to do it was last week, when we sailed from Lymington. The worst that can happen to him is that they'll cancel his Master's Certificate again.' Mike didn't say anything. His yellow oilskins gleamed with water in the grey light as he moved rhythmically back and forth to the swing of the oars, and over his shoulders the houses of Lulworth stood silent, with a grey, shut look, on the flank of the hill.

The dinghy grounded with a sudden jar and Mike jumped out into the backwash of a wave and hauled it up so that I could step out dry-footed in my shore-going clothes. We stood there in the rain for a moment, talking about ordinary, mundane things, things that had to be done around the boat. And then, as I turned to climb the beach, he checked me. 'I just want you to know, John…' He hesitated, and then said, 'As far as I'm concerned you're free to make any decision you like — whatever the risk.'

'It's very decent of you, Mike,' I said. 'But I don't think—'

'It's not a question of being decent.' He was grinning. 'I just don't like working with a man who's got something on his mind.' He left me then and pushed out in the dinghy, and I climbed the steep slope of the beach to the road where the bus was waiting for me.

CHAPTER TWO

It was almost eleven when I reached the court. I was late and the corridor leading to the courtroom was almost empty. The letter requesting my attendance gave me the guidance of one of the officials and as we reached a small door leading into the court, it opened and Snetterton came out. 'Ah, Mr Sands.' He blinked at me. 'Come to see the fun, eh?'

'I'm here as a witness,' I said.

'Yes, yes, of course. Pity to drag you away from your diving. Heard you had started work on that wreck in Worbarrow Bay.' He hesitated and then said, 'You know, we seriously considered approaching you over the question of the Mary Deare. We were going to try an asdic search. But then some new information came up and it became unnecessary.'

'What new information?' I was wondering whether the Mary Deare had been found. The weather had been bad during most of April, but there was always the chance…

IS 'You'll see, Mr Sands. Interesting case, most interesting…' And he hurried off down the corridor.

The official opened the door for me then and I went into the court. 'The seats for witnesses are on the right, sir,' he whispered. There was no need for him to have whispered. The room was full of the murmur of voices. I stood there in the doorway, a little dazed. There were many more people than I had expected. The whole court seemed crammed to overflowing; only in the public gallery was there any vacant space. The witnesses were crowded into the seats usually occupied by jurymen called but not serving and some of them had spilled over into the jury box itself. Patch I saw at once, sitting well down towards the front, his face pale and taut, but harder now, like a man who knows what is coming and has nerved himself to meet it. Behind him, and to the right, the crew were clustered in a little hard knot round Higgins's solid bulk. They looked awkward and ill-at-ease, a little exotic in their new shore-going clothes. Fraser, the captain of the Channel packet that had picked us up, was there, too, and, sitting beside him, was Janet Taggart. She gave me a quick smile, tight-lipped and a little wan, and I wondered why the devil they needed to drag her in as a witness.

And then somebody was signalling me from just behind her and, as he craned his neck up, I saw it was Hal. I pushed my way down the row and squeezed in beside him. 'I didn't expect to find you here,' I whispered.

'Very important witness,' he said. 'Don't forget that it was I who first reported the ship as a derelict hulk containing the person of my erstwhile and somewhat foolhardy skipper.' He smiled at me out of the corners of his eyes. 'Anyway, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. Going to be a damned interesting case if you ask me.'

At the time I had entered, men in various parts of the court, but chiefly on the side across from me, were standing up to give their names and state their business and who they represented. There were a surprising number of them, for, besides the insurance companies and the owners, the builders of the Mary Deare were represented, the Marine Officers' Association, the Radio Operators' Association, the various unions; there was even a solicitor appearing for the relatives of Captain Taggart deceased.

The atmosphere was very informal by comparison with a court of law — no wigs, no gowns, no police, no jury. Even the judge and his three assessors wore lounge suits. Across the court from where I sat the desks were occupied by the various counsel appearing for interested parties. They were very crowded. The witness box nearby stood empty and beyond was the Press desk with two reporters at it. On our side of the court the desks were occupied by the Treasury counsel and his junior and the Treasury solicitors and assistants.

Hal leaned towards me. 'Do you know who's representing the insurance people?' he whispered.

I shook my head. I had no information about the legal representatives. All I knew was that a Mr Bowen-Lodge QC was chairman of the Enquiry.

'Sir Lionel Falcett. About the most expensive man they could have got.' His blue eyes darted me a quick glance. 'Significant, eh?'

I glanced down at Patch. And then I was remembering that I, too, might have to go into the witness box, and all the counsel had the right to cross-examine.

A hush slowly spread through the room. The Chairman, who had been engaged in earnest discussion with his assessors, had turned and faced the court. As soon as there was complete silence he began his opening address. 'Gentlemen. This Court meets here today, as you are well aware, to investigate the loss of the steamship Mary Deare. It will be the duty of the Court to examine, not only the circumstances of the loss itself, but all the relevant factors that may possibly have contributed to that loss. The scope of this investigation, therefore, covers the state of the ship at the time she started on her ill-fated voyage from Yokohama, her seaworthiness, the condition of her machinery, the nature of her cargo and the manner of its stowage, and, in particular, the state of her fire-fighting equipment. It covers also the behaviour and conduct of all those concerned in the running of the vessel to the extent that they may or may not have contributed to the disaster.

'For disaster it was, gentlemen. Out of a total crew of thirty-two, no less than twelve men — over a third of the ship's complement — lost their lives.

Moreover, the captain died during the voyage, and a director of the company owning the vessel is reported missing. It is a sad business that we are investigating and it is possible that relatives of men who lost their lives may be present in this courtroom today. I, therefore, consider it my duty to remind you that this is a Formal Enquiry to determine the cause of this disaster and, whilst I am anxious that proper respect should be paid to the dead and that no advantage should be taken of men who, through death, are unable to testify, I would impress upon you that we are here to investigate this whole terrible business thoroughly and impartially.' Bowen-Lodge leaned a little forward. 'I will now call on Mr Holland to open proceedings on behalf of the Ministry of Transport.'

Holland might have been a banker or perhaps a stockbroker. Whereas the judge, despite his sour, dyspeptic-looking features, had comprehended the tragedy that lay behind the Enquiry and had filled the court with the drama of it, this tall, smooth-faced barrister with the sleek head of black hair had a coldblooded urbanity of manner that suggested an interest in figures rather than the frailties of human behaviour.

'Mr Learned Chairman.' He had risen and was facing the judge and the three assessors, his hands thrust into the pockets of his jacket. 'I think I should bring to your notice at the outset that the Receiver of Wreck, in his report to the Minister, stressed that in several particulars the evidence of the survivors was conflicting. As you know, in cases of this nature, the Receiver of Wreck prepares his report on the basis of depositions in writing. These depositions are made under oath. I do not propose, therefore, to outline in detail the events leading up to the disaster or the disaster itself. I will confine myself to a brief statement of the established facts concerning the voyage and leave the details — the story as it were — to emerge from the evidence of the various witnesses.'

He paused and glanced down at his notes. Then he faced the courtroom itself and in a smooth, rather bored voice summarised the events of the voyage.

The Mary Deare had been purchased by the Dellimare Trading and Shipping Company in June of the previous year. She had belonged to a Burmese company and for two years had been laid-up in a creek near Yokohama. On completion of the purchase she had been towed into Yokohama for a complete overhaul. On November 18 she had been granted a seaworthiness certificate to cover a single voyage to Antwerp and thence to England where she was to be broken up. On December 2 she completed coaling. On December 4 she began loading her cargo. This consisted of war surplus aircraft engines of American manufacture, including 56 jet engines for a particular fighter in use with NATO forces. In addition to this cargo, which was destined for Antwerp and was distributed fairly equally over the four holds, a large quantity of Japanese cotton and rayon goods were loaded. This part of the cargo was destined for Rangoon and was, therefore, loaded on top of the aircraft engines. The whole of the cargo, including the engines, was the property of the Hsu Trading Corporation, a very large and influential Chinese merchanting organisation in Singapore.

The Mary Deare sailed from Yokohama on December 8. On January 6 she reached Rangoon and off-loaded her cargo of Japanese goods. A cargo of raw cotton for England, also the property of the Hsu Corporation, was not ready at the docks for loading. The ship, therefore, proceeded to bunker and then moved out into the river, where she moored to a buoy already occupied by the Torre Annunziata, another of the Dellimare Company ships. Four days later she moved into the docks again and loaded her cargo of cotton, the bulk of it in Numbers Two and Three holds.

She sailed from Rangoon on January 15, reaching Aden on February 4. There she landed Mr Adams, the first officer, who was sick. Mr Patch was accepted to fill this vacancy. The ship sailed on February 6. On March 2, the Master, Captain James Taggart, died, and Mr Patch assumed command of the ship. The Mary Deare was then in the Mediterranean, four days out from Port Said. On March 9 she passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, out into the Atlantic. Almost immediately she ran into heavy weather. She was making a certain amount of water and the pumps were kept going intermittently. On March 16 conditions worsened and it blew full gale.

'And now,' Holland said, his voice lifting slightly from the smooth monotone in which he had been addressing the court — 'Now we come to the series of incidents — mysteries you might almost call them — that are the subject of this Investigation.'

Briefly he enumerated them: the damage sustained by the ship in the for'ard holds, the water making headway against the pumps, the shoring of the stokehold bulkhead, the fire in the radio shack, the disappearance of Dellimare; and then, after rounding Ushant, the fire in Number Three hold, the abandonment of the ship by all except the captain, the discovery of the ship still afloat the following morning, her final abandonment. He punched these events home to the packed courtroom one after another in terse, hard sentences, so that the effect of them was cumulative.

'Twelve men went to their death, gentlemen,' he added, after a pause, his voice now very quiet. 'Went to their death in a mad scramble to get away from a ship that, in point of fact, was in no immediate danger of sinking. That in itself is significant.' He had turned and was facing the Chairman of the Court. 'It is not for me to attempt to influence the Court in any way, merely to present the facts. But I am entitled to draw your attention to certain points, and the points, Mr Learned Chairman, to which I wish to draw the attention of the Court are — firstly, the succession of incidents affecting the safety and sea-keeping ability of the ship, and secondly, the abandonment of a ship that was to stay afloat in gale conditions for more than 48 hours. I submit that this is one of the most extraordinary cases to come before a Formal Enquiry and one that may, as a result of your decision, have far-reaching consequences for one or more of the people here in this courtroom today.'

In making that pronouncement his eyes had roved the room — to the lawyers representing the various interested parties across the floor of the court, to the public gallery, and, finally, he had turned his body round and had stared at the witnesses. His gaze was cold and hard and accusing.

Still facing the witnesses, he went on: 'I have referred to a lack of consistency in the evidence given on oath in depositions made by the various witnesses. Those same witnesses, and some others, will be giving evidence on oath before this Court. But here there is a difference; you can be cross-examined on your evidence in the witness box by myself or by any or all of the representatives of the interested parties.' He paused and then added, 'I would remind you that perjury is a serious offence.'

There was complete silence as he stared at us, and some of the Mary Deare's crew shifted uneasily in their seats. Abruptly, he sat down. For perhaps thirty seconds he let the silence his speech had produced hang over the court, and then he got slowly to his feet again and called 'Gideon Patch'.

Patch was sitting quite still, his eyes fixed across the court — fixed on nothing — and he didn't move. I thought for a moment that he hadn't heard his name called. But then he turned his head and looked at Holland, and quietly, like a man who cannot believe that the moment has finally come, he got to his feet. He seemed to brace himself to meet the situation and, with a firm, decisive tread, he crossed the floor of the court and took his stand in the witness box.

The movement released the tension in the court so that there was a sudden murmur of voices and shifting of feet that continued whilst the oath was being administered and then gradually died away as Holland began his questions, Patch answering them in a voice that was barely audible.

His name was Gideon Stephen Patch. He had been educated at Pangbourne, joined the Merchant Service as a cadet in 1935, Mate's Certificate 1941, Master's Certificate 1944, first command 1945, the Belle Isle incident, the years on the beach; the wasted, frustrated years — Holland took him through it all, fact after fact in that same bored voice as though he were tracing the history of a parcel sent through the post. And then the technical details: Did he consider the Mary Deare seaworthy? Had he examined the fire-fighting equipment? Had he inspected the boats himself? Did he regard the crew as efficient? Were the officers, in his opinion, competent?

And Patch, once over the hurdle of the Belle Isle sinking and the suspension of his Master's Certificate, began noticeably to relax and to gain confidence. It was all so impersonal. Yes the boats were all right, he had inspected them personally. The crew were average — he had sailed with worse. The officers? He would rather not comment. Some were good, some were not.

'And the captain?' The question was put in the same flat, bored voice.

Patch hesitated, and then said, 'I imagine he was a good seaman.'

'You imagine?' Holland's dark brows lifted slightly.

'Captain Taggart was a sick man, sir.'

'Then why was he not put ashore?'

'I don't know.'

'The first officer, Adams, was put ashore because he was sick. Why wasn't Captain Taggart put ashore, if he was also sick?'

'I imagine the owners thought him fit enough to complete the voyage.'

'By the owners you mean Mr Dellimare?'

'Yes.'

'Tell me, what was the nature of Captain Taggart's illness?'

Patch had clearly been expecting that question, and now it had come, he looked unhappy about it and for a moment his eyes glanced towards the waiting witnesses. He was looking towards Janet Taggart. And then he was facing Holland again. 'I'm sorry, sir, but I do not think I can answer that.'

Holland made a little impatient gesture. It was obvious that he intended to press the point, but the Chairman intervened.

'Mr Holland.' He was leaning forward. 'It seems hardly necessary for us to pursue this matter. I do not feel that the nature of Captain Taggart's illness can have any bearing on the subject of this Investigation.'

Holland had turned and was facing the judge's chair, his hands gripping the lapels of his jacket as though he were, in fact, wearing a gown. 'I submit, Mr Learned Chairman, that everything connected with the Mary Deare is relevant to your Investigation. I am endeavouring to present a complete picture. To do so I must give you the facts — all the facts.'

'Quite so, Mr Holland.' Bowen-Lodge's mouth was a trap-shut line. 'But I see here' — and he glanced at his papers — 'that Miss Taggart is amongst the witnesses in this court. I would ask you to bear that in mind, Mr Holland, and, in your references to her father, to avoid as far as possible giving her any further cause for pain.'

'Unfortunately…' But Holland checked himself before Bowen-Lodge's cold, official stare, and then turned to face Patch. 'I will content myself at the moment with asking you whether, in fact, you knew what was wrong with Captain Taggart?'

'Yes, I knew,' Patch answered. And,then added quickly, 'But I had no idea that it would prove fatal.'

'Quite so.' Holland turned to the cargo then. 'As first officer you would assume responsibility for the state of loading of the holds. Did you examine the holds yourself?'

'I satisfied myself they were properly loaded.'

'All four holds?'.'Yes.'

'You actually went into each of the holds yourself?'

'Numbers One and Four holds, yes. The other two were full of cargo, but I was able to get some idea of the stowage by looking in through the inspection hatches.'

'Before or after sailing from Aden?'

'Before.'

'Would you tell the Court exactly how these holds were loaded.'

Patch started with Number One hold and worked aft. He gave the dimensions of each — they ran the full width of the ship throughout their depth. The floor of each hold was covered by cases. He gave the approximate dimensions of the cases and the USAAF code numbering painted on them.

You knew that those cases contained aero engines?' Mr Holland asked.

'Yes, I did.'

'From personal observation? By that I mean, did you at any time examine the contents of one of those cases yourself?'

'No. I had no occasion to. In any case, it would have been very difficult to get one opened — they were tightly packed and, except in Numbers One and Four holds, the cotton cargo completely covered them.'

'I see. So that when you say you knew the cases contained aero engines, you are really saying that that was how the contents were described on the manifest?' Patch nodded. 'Did Captain Taggart show you the manifest before you made your inspection of the holds?'

'I had a look at the manifest before I made my inspection.'

Holland stared at him. 'That wasn't what I asked you. Did Captain Taggart show you the manifest before you made your inspection?'

Patch hesitated and then said, 'No.'

'Had you seen Captain Taggart at that time?'

'Yes.'

'Did you ask him for the manifest?'

'No.'

'Why not? Surely if you were going to inspect the holds—'

'Captain Taggart wasn't well, sir.'

Holland hesitated. Then he half-shrugged his shoulders and turned to the ship herself. There followed nearly half an hour of technical details — her dimensions, construction, date of building, repairs, alterations, characteristics and behaviour, and her history.

She had been built on the Clyde in 1910 for the Atlantic trade. Patch had got her history from some old notebook he had found on board. He had even discovered the origin of her name; the result of some long-dead chairman's dry sense of humour, his wife being called Mary and.his own second name being Deare. The ship had been torpedoed twice in the First World War, patched up and kept at sea in convoy after convoy, and then in 1922 she had hit a growler off the Gulf of St Lawrence and after that she'd been sold and for ten years had tramped the seas. The depression caught her in a Far Eastern port where she lay rotting until the shadow of another war raised shipping freights and she changed hands again and was put to work in the Indian Ocean and the China Seas. She was torpedoed again in 1941, just outside Singapore, packed with troops. She limped into Rangoon, was patched up and sailed to San Francisco. There she had the only decent overhaul in twenty years and went back to work again in the Far Eastern theatre. And then in the last days of the Japanese war, she was stranded on a coral reef under shell-fire. Half her bottom was torn out, her keel permanently kinked, part of her superstructure shot away.

'Any modern ship would have broken her back,' Patch said, and there was a sort of pride in the way he said it.

He went on to tell how she had changed hands again in 1947 — a Burmese owner this time; how she had gone on struggling from port to port throughout the Far East with a twisted back and botched-up repairs until she had been discarded in Yokohama, four years later, and left there to rot until the Dellimare Company purchased her.

In telling her story, he somehow invested the Mary Deare with personality. If he had laid stress on the fact that she was a broken-down old hulk on her way to the scrap-heap he could have demonstrated his ability as a seaman and as a Master in bringing her up through the Bay in one of the worst storms of the year. Instead, he told the Court that she was a fine ship, easy to handle, and explained that it was only the repairs, carried out in poorly equipped Far Eastern ports, that caused her to leak. His loyalty to the ship was impressive, but it lost him the sympathy he might so easily have had.

After that Holland was taking him over the details of the voyage — up through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean; and all the time he questioned him about the crew, the officers, the relations between Dellimare and Taggart; and the picture that emerged was not a pleasant one — the crew ill-disciplined, the chief engineer incompetent, a poker addict, gambling indiscriminately with crew and officers, the captain keeping to his cabin, never on the bridge, and Dellimare roaming restlessly round the ship, feeding alone in his cabin, occasionally with Higgins, and sometimes shut up with the captain for hours on end.

The court was very still as Holland reached the point at which Patch had assumed command. 'According to your entry in the ship's log, Captain Taggart died some time in the early hours of March 2nd. Is that correct?'

'Yes.'

'You had no doctor on board?'

'No.'

Janet Taggart was leaning forward, her face very pale, the knuckles of her hands white as they gripped the back of the seat in front of her.

'Did you treat Captain Taggart yourself?'

'I did what I could.'

'And what was that?'

'I got him to bed. I tried to get him to take a sedative, but he wouldn't.' Patch's voice trailed off and he glanced quickly across the court at Janet Taggart.

'Did you lock him in his cabin?'

'Yes.' His voice was scarcely above a whisper.

'Why?'

Patch did not reply.

'You state in the log that, in your opinion, Captain Taggart died of heart failure. Would you please explain to the Court what it was that caused his heart — if it was his heart — to fail?'

'Mr Holland.' Bowen-Lodge's voice cut in, sharp and high. 'I must remind you of what I said before. I do not consider this relevant or necessary.'

But Holland was obstinate this time. 'With all due deference, Mr Learned Chairman, I consider it highly relevant. The witness is showing commendable restraint regarding the nature of Captain Taggart's illness. That illness, however, has a considerable bearing on the efficiency of the command he inherited and in fairness to him the Court must be informed.' And, without waiting for permission, he swung round on Patch and said, 'Now that you know the reason for the question, perhaps you will answer it. What was the basic cause of death?'

Patch stood there, obstinately silent, and Holland became suddenly impatient. The man died locked in his cabin. Isn't that correct?'

It was brutally put and there was a shocked look on Patch's face as he nodded dumbly.

'Why did you lock him in his cabin?' And when Patch didn't answer, Holland put a leading question.

'Is it true that you locked him in his cabin because he was raving?'

'He was delirious, yes,' Patch murmured.

'He was upsetting the crew?'

'Yes.'

'Making wild accusations?'

'Yes.'

'What accusations?'

Patch glanced unhappily round the court, and then said, 'He was accusing the officers of stealing liquor from his cabin.'

'Now, will you please answer this question.' Holland was leaning forward. 'What was the basic cause, as far as you know, of Captain Taggart's death?'

Patch might have remained obstinate on this point, but Bowen-Lodge's voice cut in from high up on the judge's seat. 'Witness will kindly answer the question put to him by Counsel. I will repeat it for his benefit — what was the basic cause of death?'

Patch hesitated. 'Drink, sir,' he said reluctantly.

'Drink? Do you mean he died of drink?'

'Because of it — yes.'

The stunned silence that enveloped the court was broken by a girl's voice. It was shrill and high and quavering as she cried out, 'That's not true. How can you say a thing like that — when he's dead?'

'Please, Miss Taggart.' Holland's voice was gentle, almost fatherly. 'The witness is under oath.'

'I don't care whether he's under oath or not, he's lying,' she sobbed wildly. Patch's face had gone very white. Fraser was trying to pull her back into her seat. But she had turned towards the Chairman. 'Please stop him,' she sobbed. And then, flinging up her head, she declared, 'My father was a fine man, a man anybody here would be proud to have known.'

'I understand, Miss Taggart.' Bowen-Lodge's voice was very quiet and soft. 'But I must remind you that this Court is investigating a disaster in which many men lost their lives. The witness is under oath. Moreover, he is not the only witness. You may rest assured that this accusation will be probed and the truth revealed. Will you please be seated now. Or if you prefer it, you may leave the court and wait outside until you are called to give evidence.'

'I'll stay,' she answered in a small, tight voice. 'I'm sorry.' She sat down slowly, her face completely white, her hands fumbling for a handkerchief.

Holland cleared his throat. 'Only one more question on this subject and then we will leave it. About how much liquor was Captain Taggart in the habit of consuming each day?'

'I cannot answer that. I don't know.' Patch's voice was scarcely audible.

'You mean you didn't actually see him consume any set quantity?'

Patch nodded.

'But you must have some idea. What was it he habitually drank — whisky?'

'Yes.'

'Anything else?'

'Sometimes a bottle of cognac. Occasionally rum.'

'How much?'

'I don't know.'

'Had this been going on ever since the start of the voyage?'

'Yes, I think so.'

'Then, since it affected you directly as first officer, you must have made enquiries as to how much he drank. How much did you gather he consumed each day?'

Patch hesitated, and then reluctantly: 'The steward said a bottle, a bottle and a half — sometimes two.' The court gasped.

'I see.' The sound of suppressed sobbing was distinctly audible in the stillness of the court. 'So that he was completely incapable as the Master of the ship?'

'Oh, no.' Patch shook his head. 'Towards the end of the day he would become a little fuddled. But otherwise I would say he was reasonably in command of the situation.'

'You mean to say' — Bowen-Lodge was leaning forward — 'that he was in full command of his faculties when he was steadily drinking one to two bottles a day?'

'Yes, sir. That is to say, most of the time.'

'But you admitted that he was raving and you had to lock him in his cabin. If he was raving, then surely…' the Chairman's brows lifted in a question.

'He wasn't raving because he was drunk,' Patch answered slowly.

'Then why was he raving?'

'He had run out of liquor.'

A shocked silence gripped the court. Janet Taggart had stopped sobbing. She was sitting quite rigid, staring at Patch with a sort of fascinated horror.

'I would like to get this point perfectly clear before we go any further,' Bowen-Lodge said in a quiet, controlled voice. 'What you're suggesting is that Captain Taggart did not die of drink, but the lack of it. Is that correct?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Do you really think absence of liquor can kill a man?'

'I don't know,' Patch answered wretchedly. 'All I know is that he lived on nothing else, and when he hadn't got it, he went raving mad and died. He never seemed to have anything in the way of food.'

Bowen-Lodge considered for a moment, his pencil tracing lines on the paper in front of him. At length he looked down at Counsel. 'I think, Mr Holland, we should call medical evidence to establish the point one way or another.'

Holland nodded. 'I have already arranged for that — it seemed necessary after reading his deposition.'

'Good. Then we can leave the matter in abeyance till then.' He sounded relieved. 'Please proceed with the examination of the witness.'

The next stage of the voyage was uneventful, but Patch was taken through it in detail and the picture that emerged was of a conscientious officer doing his best to pull a ship's company together with the presence of the owner a constant irritant. The incidents that came to light under Holland's steady questioning were trivial enough in themselves — the crew's mess table uncleaned between meals, cockroaches, several men lousy, the galley dirty, a lifeboat without provisions, a man injured in a fight, the engines stopped for the replacement of a bearing that had been allowed to run hot — but together they produced an impression of a ship that was badly served by the men who ran her.

Other things emerged, too. The log was improperly kept, the wells not sounded regularly, water consumption unchecked, and as often as not it was Higgins, by then acting as first officer, who was responsible. Patch showed that he was coming to depend more and more on his second officer, John Rice, and the growing sense of comradeship between the two men ran like a strong thread through the evidence.

Twice Patch referred to Dellimare. Once of his own accord, when he was dealing with the lack of supervision of the engine-room staff. 'He was encouraging Mr Burrows, my chief engineer, in his poker playing. I had to insist that he stopped entertaining Mr Burrows in his cabin. They were playing cards together till all hours of the night and it was throwing undue responsibility upon Mr Raft, the second engineer.'

'Did Mr Dellimare raise any objection?' Holland asked.

'Yes.'

'What did he say?'

'He said it was his ship and he would do what he damn' well liked and entertain any of the officers he pleased when he pleased.'

'And what did you say to that?'

'That it was endangering the safety of the ship and the morale of the engine-room and that I was the captain, not him, and the ship would be run the way I wanted it run.'

'In other words you had a row?'

'Yes.'

'And did he agree to stop playing poker with the chief engineer?'

'In the end, yes.'

'In the end? You used some persuasion?'

'Yes. I told him I had given Mr Burrows a direct order and that, if it wasn't obeyed, I should know what action to take. And I made it a direct order as far as he was concerned.'

'And he accepted that?'

'Yes.'

'Will you tell the Court what your relations with Mr Dellimare were at this stage?'

Patch hesitated. He had revealed that his relations with the owner were strained. He could in one sentence explain the reason for those strained relations and in doing so gain the sympathy of the whole court. But he let the opportunity go, merely saying, 'We did not see eye-to-eye on certain matters.' And Holland left it at that.

A further reference to Dellimare occurred almost accidentally. Patch had just assured the Court that he ITS had personally checked all four holds as the ship ran into heavy weather off the coast of Portugal, and Holland, again being scrupulously fair to him, drew attention to the fact that he hadn't relied on his first officer's report to make sure that there could be no shifting of the cargo. 'You didn't trust him, in other words?'

'To be honest, no.'

'Did Mr Higgins, in fact, check the holds?'

'I don't know.'

'You thought so little of him that you didn't even ask whether he had checked them?'

'Yes, I suppose that is correct.'

'Did anybody, other than yourself, check the holds?'

Patch paused a moment before replying. Then he said, 'I think Mr Dellimare checked them.'

'You think he checked them?'

'Well, he was in Number One hold when I went in through the inspection hatch to check. I presumed that he was there for the same purpose as myself.'

Holland seemed to consider this for a moment. 'I see. But this was the duty of one of the ship's officers. It seems odd that the owner should find it necessary to check the cargo himself. Have you any comment to make on that?'

Patch shook his head.

'What sort of man was Mr Dellimare?' Holland asked. 'What was your impression of him?'

Now, I thought — now he'll tell them the truth about Dellimare. It was the opening he needed. But he stood there, without saying anything, his face very pale and that nerve twitching at the corner of his mouth.

'What I am trying to get at is this,' Holland went on. 'We are coming now to the night of March 16. On that night Mr Dellimare disappeared — lost overboard. Did you know that Mr Dellimare had been in the Navy during the war?'

Patch nodded and his lips framed the word 'Yes'.

'He served in corvettes and frigates, mainly in the Atlantic. He must have been through a great many storms.' There was a significant pause, and then Holland said, 'What was your impression of him, at this time, when you knew you were running into very heavy weather? Was he normal in every way?'

'Yes, I think so.' Patch's voice was very low.

'But you're not certain.'

'I didn't know him very well.'

'You had been on this ship with him for over a month. However much he kept to his cabin, you must have had some idea of his mental state. Would you say he was worried?'

'Yes, I think you could say that.'

'Business worries or private worries?'

'I don't know.'

'I'll put it quite bluntly. When you found him checking the cargo, what interpretation did you put on his action?'

'I didn't put any interpretation on it.' Patch had found his voice again and was answering factually and clearly.

'What did you say to him?'

'I told him to stay out of the holds.'

'Why?'

'He shouldn't have been there. The cargo wasn't his responsibility.'

'Quite. I'll put it to you another way. Would you say that his presence there indicated that he was getting scared, that his nerves were going to pieces? He had been torpedoed once during the war and was a long time in the water before being picked up. Would you say that his war experience was in any way affecting him?'

'No, I would… I don't know.'

Holland hesitated and then he gave a little shrug. He had been a man seeking after the truth, using the depositions already made as a base from which to probe. But now he changed his tactics and was content to let Patch tell the story of the night the Mary Deare was hove-to in the wind-spun waters of the Bay of Biscay, not questioning, not interrupting — just letting it run.

And Patch told it well, gaining from the rapt silence of the court, telling it in hard, factual sentences. And the Mary Deare floated into that court, rusty and battered, with the seas bursting like gunfire against the submerged reef of her bows. I watched his face as he told it straight, man-to-man — from the witness box to the Court — and I had the odd feeling that all the time he was skating round something. I looked up at the Chairman. He was sitting slightly forward with his chin cupped in his right hand, listening with a shut, tight-lipped, judicial face that told me nothing of his reactions.

The facts, as Patch presented them, were straightforward enough: the glass falling steadily, the seas rising, the wind increasing, the ship rolling, rolling steady and slow, but gradually rolling her bulwarks under as the mountains of water lifted her on to their streaming crests and tumbled her down into the valleys between. He had been on the bridge since dusk. Rice had been there, too. Just the two of them and the helmsman and a lookout. It had happened about 23.20 hours — a slight explosion, a sort of shudder. It had sounded like another wave breaking and slamming against the bows, except that there was no white water at that particular moment and the ship did not stagger. She was down in a trough and rising slowly. The break of the wave came later and, with it, the hesitation, the crash of the impact, and the sudden blur of white hiding all the fore part of the ship.

Nothing had been said for a moment, and then Rice's voice had cut through the gale's roar as he shouted, 'Did we hit something, sir?' And then he had sent Rice to sound the wells and back had come the report — making water in both the for'ard holds, particularly in Number One. He had ordered the pumps to be started in both Number One and Number Two holds, and he had stood on the bridge and watched the bows become heavy and the seas start to break green over all the for'ard part of the ship. And then Dellimare had come on to the bridge, white-faced and scared-looking. Higgins, too. They were talking about abandoning ship. They seemed to think she was going down. And Rice came back to say the crew were panicking.

He had left the bridge to Higgins then and had gone out on to the upper deck with Rice. Four men in life-jackets were starting to clear Number Three boat. They were scared and he had to hit one man before they would leave the boat and go back to their duties. He had taken all the men he could find, some ten of them, and had set them to work under the bos'n and the third engineer to shore up the bulkhead between Number Two hold and the boiler-room just in case. And it was whilst he was supervising this that the helmsman had reported to the engine-room that the bridge was full of smoke.

He had taken half a dozen men and when he reached the bridge there was only the helmsman there, his eyes streaming, racked with coughing, as he clung to the wheel, nursing the ship through the crowding storm-breakers, the whole place filled with a fog of acrid smoke.

The fire had been in the radio shack, a little above and behind the bridge. No, he had no idea how it had started. The radio operator had gone below to get his life-jacket. He had stayed below to relieve himself and to have a mug of cocoa. Higgins had gone aft to inspect the steering which seemed slack. No, he didn't know where Dellimare was. He regretted that the helmsman was not among the survivors.

They had used foam extinguishers on the fire. But the heat had been so intense that they hadn't been able to get inside the room. What had finally put the fire out was the partial collapse of the roof, which had allowed the water from a breaking wave to engulf the flames.

The wind was now Force 12 in the gusts — hurricane force. He had hove-to then, putting the ship's bows into the wind with the engines at slow ahead, just holding her there, and praying to God that the seas, piling down in white cascades of water on to the bows, wouldn't smash the for'ard hatch covers. They had stayed hove-to like that, in imminent danger of their lives, for fourteen hours, the pumps just holding their own, and all the time he and Rice had kept moving constantly through the ship, to see that the bulkhead — which was leaking where the weight of water was bulging it, low down near its base — was properly shored, to keep the crew from panicking, to see that they kept to their stations and helped the ship in its struggle against the sea.

About 06.00 hours, after twenty-two hours without sleep, he had retired to his cabin. The wind was dropping by then and the glass beginning to rise. He had gone to sleep fully clothed and two hours later had been woken by Samuel King, the Jamaican steward, with the news that Mr Dellimare could not be found.

The whole ship had been searched, but without success. The man had vanished. 'I could only presume that he had been washed overboard,' Patch said, and then he stood silent, as though waiting for Holland to question him, and Holland asked him if he had held any sort of enquiry.

'Yes. I had every member of the crew make a statement before Mr Higgins, Mr Rice and myself. As far as we could determine, the last man to see Mr Dellimare alive was the steward. He had seen him leave his cabin and go out through the door on to the upper-deck leading aft. That was at about 04.30 hours.'

'And nobody saw him after that?'

Patch hesitated, and then said, 'As far as anybody could find out — no.'

'The upper deck was the boat deck?'

'Yes.'

'Was there any danger in going out on to that deck?'

'I don't know. I was on the bridge dealing with the fire.'

'Yes, but in your opinion — was there danger in crossing that deck?'

'No, I don't think so. It's difficult to say. Spray and some seas were sweeping right across all the decks.'

'Right aft?'

'Yes.'

'And Mr Dellimare was going aft?'

'So King said.'

Holland paused and then he asked, 'Have you any idea where Mr Dellimare was going?'

'No.'

'In view of what you have told us before, would it be reasonable to assume that he might be going aft to check that the hatches of the after-holds were still secure?'

'Possibly. But there was no need. I had checked them myself.'

'But if he had gone to check those hatches, it would have meant going down on to the after well-deck?'

'He could have seen the state of the hatches from the after end of the upper deck.'

'But if he had gone down, would it have been dangerous?'

'Yes. Yes, I think so. Both well-decks were being swept by the seas.'

'I see. And that was the last anyone saw of him?' The court was very still. The old ship, with her waterlogged bows pointed into the gale and a man's body tossed among the spindrift out there in the raging seas; there wasn't anybody in the room who couldn't see it for himself. The puzzle of it, the mystery of it — it held them all enthralled. And behind me somebody was crying.

Then Patch's voice was going on with his story, nervous and jerky, in tune with the sense of tragedy that was seen only in the imagination and not in the cleansing, healing atmosphere of salt wind and spray.

The wind had fallen, and the sea with it, and at 12.43 hours, according to the entry in the log, he had rung for half-ahead on the engines and had resumed course. As soon as it was practicable he had ordered the hand pumps manned, and, as the bows slowly emerged from the sea, he had set a working party under Rice to repair the damage to the for'ard hatches.

He had considered putting into Brest. But, with the weather improving and the pumps holding their own, he had finally decided to hold his course, and had rounded Ushant early on the morning of the 18th. By then he had increased engine revolutions to economical speed. There was still a big swell running, but the sea was quiet, almost dead calm, with very little wind. Nevertheless, he had hugged the French coast just in case there was some sudden change in the state of the for'ard holds. He de Batz was abeam at 13.34, Triagoz light at 16.12, Sept lies at 17.21. He read these times out to the Court from the log. At 19.46 the group occulting light on Les Heaux was just visible through a light mist four points on the starb'd bow. He had then altered course to North 33 East. This would take him outside the Barnouic and Roches Douvres reefs and leave Les Hanois, the light on the south-western tip of Guernsey, about four miles to starb'd. After altering course he had informed his officers that he had decided to take the ship into Southampton for inspection and repairs.

At approximately 21.20, when the steward was clearing his evening meal, which he had taken, as usual, alone in his cabin, he had heard shouts, and then Rice had rushed in to say that the after hold was on fire and that the crew were in a state of panic.

'Any particular reason for their panic?' Holland asked.

'Well, I think they thought the ship was jinxed,' Patch answered. 'In the last two days I had heard that word often.'

'And what did you think? Did you think the ship was jinxed?'

Patch faced the Chairman and the assessors. 'No,' he said. 'I thought there had been a deliberate attempt to wreck her.'

There was a stir of interest throughout the courtroom. But he didn't punch it home with any direct accusation. He just said: 'It was too coincidental — the damage to the holds and then the fire in the radio shack.'

'You were convinced that there had been some sort of explosion in Number One hold?' Holland asked.

Patch hesitated. 'Yes. Yes, I think so.'

'And the radio shack?'

'If it was an explosion, then the radio shack had to be put out of action — it was my means of communication with the rest of the world.'

'I see.' Holland paused, and then he said, 'What you are saying, in fact, is that there was somebody on board who was trying to destroy the ship.'

'Yes.'

'And when you heard that Number Three hold was on fire — did you immediately think that this was another attempt to destroy the ship?'

'Yes, I did.'

'And is that still your opinion?'

IBS Patch nodded. 'Yes.'

'You realise that this is a very serious accusation you are making?'

'Yes, I realise that.'

Holland held the court in utter silence for a moment. And then he said, 'There were thirty-one men on board the Mary Deare. If the fire were deliberately started, it endangered all those lives. It was tantamount to murder.'

'Yes.'

'And do you still say that the fire was started deliberately?'

'Yes, I do.'

The next question was inevitable. 'Who did you suspect of starting it?' Holland asked, and Patch hesitated. To produce the story of Dellimare's offer now was pointless. Dellimare was dead. He couldn't have started that fire, and all Patch could say was that he hadn't had much time for formulating suspicions — he had been too busy trying to save the ship.

'But you must have thought about it since?'

'Yes, I have.' Patch was facing the judge and the assessors. 'But I think that is a matter for the Court to decide.'

Bowen-Lodge nodded his agreement and Holland then got Patch back to the events following the outbreak of the fire. He and Rice had organised a fire-fighting party. No, Higgins wasn't there. It was his watch. But the second engineer was there and the radio operator and the bos'n. They ran out hoses and got them playing on to the flames through the inspection hatch whilst they cleared part of the main hatch cover. They also cleared a section of Number Four hatch cover in case it was necessary to play the hoses on the bulkhead between the two holds. He had then gone down into Number Four hold through the inspection hatch.

'Why did you do that?'

'I wanted to see how hot the bulkhead plates had become. I didn't want the fire to spread aft. Also, because that hold was only partly filled with cargo, I hoped to be able to tell from the heat of the plates just how serious the fire was — what hold it had got.'

'And what did you discover?'

'It had clearly only just broken out. The bulkhead wasn't even hot. But I didn't discover that until later.'

'How do you mean?'

He explained then how he had been knocked unconscious just as he had reached the bottom of the vertical ladder. He told it in the same words that he had told it to me in his cabin on the Mary Deare and when he had finished Holland said, 'You're sure it wasn't an accident — that you didn't slip?'

'Quite sure,' Patch answered.

'Perhaps something fell on you — a loose piece of metal?'

But Patch pointed to his jaw where the scar still showed, maintaining that it was quite impossible for it to have happened accidentally.

'And when you came to, was there any sort of weapon near you that your assailant might have used?'

'No, I don't think so. But I couldn't be certain. The place was full of smoke and I was dazed, half-asphyxiated.'

'I put it to you that one of the crew — a man, say, who had a grudge against you — could have followed you down… hit you perhaps with his fist?'

'He would have had to be a very powerful man.' Patch was looking across at Higgins. And then he went on to describe how, when he had come to, he could still hear the men shouting as they got the boats away. He had crawled back up the vertical ladder to the inspection hatch, but the cover had been closed and clamped down. What saved him was the fact that the main hatch had been cleared at one corner and after a long time he had managed to stack enough bales of cotton up to be able to reach this opening and crawl out on to the deck. He had found Number Three boat hanging from its bow falls, the other davits empty. The engines were still running, the pumps still working and the hoses were still pouring water into Number Three hold. But not a single member of the crew remained on board.

It was an incredible, almost unbelievable story. And he went on to tell how, alone and unaided, he had put the fire out. And then in the morning he had found a complete stranger wandering about the ship.

'That would be Mr Sands, from the yacht Sea Witch?'

'Yes.'

'Would you explain why you didn't accept his offer to take you off?'

'I saw no reason to abandon ship. She was badly down by the bows, but she wasn't in imminent danger. I thought he would notify the authorities and that it would help the salvage tug if I were on board to organise the tow.'

He told them then how he had seen me fail to regain my yacht, how he had pulled me on to the deck, and then he was telling them of our efforts to save the ship in the teeth of the rising gale, how we had got the engines going and the pumps working and kept her stern to the wind. But he made no mention of the Minkies. According to him, we had finally abandoned the ship in a rubber dinghy taken from Dellimare's cabin when she was on the verge of sinking. No, he couldn't say exactly what the position was, but it was somewhere to the east of the Roches Douvres. No, we hadn't seen her go down. The rubber dinghy? Well, yes, it did seem to indicate that Dellimare had been nervous, had not trusted the boats or the seaworthiness of the ship.

'Two final questions,' Holland said. 'And they are very important questions for you and for everybody connected with the ship.' He paused and then said, 'On reflection, are you quite convinced that it was an explosion that caused the flooding in Number One hold? I put it to you that in the conditions prevailing it was almost impossible to be certain that it wasn't some submerged object that you hit or a wave breaking against the bows.'

Patch hesitated, glancing round the court. 'It definitely wasn't a sea breaking,' he said quietly.

'It was afterwards that the next sea broke over the bows. As to whether we hit something or an explosive charge was set off, only an inspection of the actual damage could prove it one way or the other.'

'Quite. But since the ship is probably lying in at least twenty fathoms of water and we don't know quite where, inspection of the damage is out of the question. I want your opinion.'

'I don't think I can say any more than I have. I can't be certain.'

'But you think it was an explosion?' Holland waited, but getting no reply, he added, 'Having regard to the fire in the radio shack and, later, the fire in the after hold — taking them all together, you incline to the theory that it was an explosion?'

'If you put it that way — yes.'

'Thank you.' Holland sat down and even then nobody moved. There was no whispering, no shuffling of feet. The whole court was held in the spell of the evidence.

And then Sir Lionel Falcett rose. 'Mr Learned Chairman, I would be glad if you would put one or two additional questions to the witness.' He was a small man with thinning hair and a high forehead, a very ordinary-seeming man except for his voice, which had great depth of tone and was vibrant, so that one was conscious of the power of great energy and vitality behind it. It was his voice, not the man, that instantly dominated the court. 'Witness has made it clear that he is convinced, in his own mind, that some attempt, was made to wreck the Mary Deare.

And indeed, the incidents he has related to the Court, in the absence of any natural explanation, would appear to support this conclusion. I would, however, point out to the Court, that the value of the ship herself was not such as to justify so elaborate a plot and that we must, therefore, presume that, if such a plot existed, it was directed towards fraudulently obtaining the insurance value of the cargo. I would respectfully point out to you, Mr Learned Chairman, that there would only be financial gain in such a dastardly and murderous endeavour if, in fact, the cargo had been removed prior to the loss of the ship.'

Bowen-Lodge nodded. 'I quite understand your argument, Sir Lionel.' He glanced at the clock at the far end of the court, above the public gallery. 'What is your question?'

'It concerns the time the ship was moored alongside the Torre Annunziata in the Rangoon River,' Sir Lionel said. 'My information is that the Mary Deare's crew were given shore leave, and that during that period the Torre Annunziata was a blaze of lights with all her winches in operation.' He looked across at Holland. 'I understand that a deposition to this effect will be introduced later and that it states that the official concerned was informed by the Master of the Torre Annunziata that he had been shifting cargo to make room for some steel tubing he was due to load.' He turned back to face Bowen-Lodge. 'I should like to know, Mr Learned Chairman, whether the witness heard any of his officers speak of this after he had joined the ship — whether, in fact, it had been the subject of some comment?'

The question was put and Patch answered that he had heard of it from Rice. He hadn't at the time attached any significance to it.

'But you do now?' Sir Lionel suggested.

Patch nodded. 'Yes.'

'Just one more question, Mr Learned Chairman. Can the witness tell us whether Mr Dellimare at any time made any reference to the cargo?'

The question was put and, when Patch answered, no, Sir Lionel said, 'You had no indication from anyone that the cargo might be other than that stated on the manifest?'

'No.'

'I will put it to you another way — a ship is a very tight little company of men, and in any enclosed community like that a thing popularly known as the grapevine operates. Did you hear any rumours about the cargo after you joined the ship?'

'Some men seemed to think that we had a cargo of explosives on board,' Patch answered. 'It was a rumour that persisted despite the fact that I posted a copy of the manifest on the crew's notice board.'

'You thought it dangerous that they should think they were sitting on top of a lot of explosives?'

'I did.'

'Having regard to the sort of crew you had?'

'Yes.'

'Would you say that this rumour would be sufficient in itself to cause panic amongst the crew as soon as they knew a fire had broken out?'

'Probably.'

'In point of fact Rice reported that they were panicking.' Sir Lionel leaned forward, staring at Patch. 'How did this extraordinary rumour get around the ship?'

Patch glanced involuntarily towards the waiting witnesses. 'I don't think Mr Higgins was ever convinced that we were carrying the cargo declared on the manifest.'

'He thought it was a cargo of explosives, eh? What gave him that idea?'

'I don't know.'

'Did you ask him?'

'Yes, I did.'

'When?'

'Just after we rounded Ushant.'

'And what did he say?'

'He refused to answer.'

'What were his exact words when you put the question to him?'

'His exact words?'

'Yes.'

'He said I could bloody well try and get the answer out of Taggart or Dellimare and stop bothering him. They were both dead, of course.'

'Thank you.' Sir Lionel folded himself delicately into his seat. Bowen-Lodge looked at the clock again and adjourned the court. 'Two o'clock please, gentlemen.' He rose and the court rose with him, standing whilst he left by the door at the rear of the judge's chair, followed by his three assessors.

When I turned to leave I found that Mrs Petrie had been sitting right behind me. She gave me a little brief smile of recognition. Her face was puffy and pallid under her make-up and her eyes were red. Gundersen was there, too. He had been sitting beside her, but now he had moved along the row and was talking to Higgins. She went out on her own. 'Who's that woman?' Hal asked me.

'One of the Dellimare directors,' I replied, and I told him about my visit to the company's offices. 'I rather think she may have been living with Dellimare,' I told him.

Outside, the sun shone on rain-wet pavements, and it came as something of a shock to discover that there were people — ordinary people who knew nothing of the Mary Deare — hurrying about their everyday affairs. Patch was standing alone on the pavement's edge. He had been waiting for me and he came straight across. 'I'd like a word with you, Sands.' His voice was hoarse with talking and his face looked drained.

Hal said he would go 'on to the hotel where we had decided to lunch and Patch watched him go, fidgeting with the coins in his pocket. As soon as Hal was out of ear-shot, he said, 'You told me your boat wouldn't be ready until the end of the month.' He said it accusingly, anger and resentment in his voice.

'Yes,' I said. 'It was ready a week earlier than I expected.'

'Why didn't you let me know? I went down to the yard last Wednesday and you'd already gone. Why didn't you tell me?' And then he suddenly burst out, 'All I needed was one day. Just one day out there.' He stared at me, literally grinding his teeth. 'Don't you realise — one look at that hole in the ship's hull and I'd have known. I'd have been able to tell the truth then. As it is—' his eyes were a little wild, like something brought to bay and not knowing which way to turn. 'As it is I don't know what the hell I'm saying, what God-damn pit I'm digging for myself. One day! That was all I wanted.'

'You didn't tell me that,' I said. 'In any case, you know very well that an inspection of that sort would have to be carried out by the authorities.' But I could understand how he had wanted to be certain, to prove that his suspicions were justified. 'It'll work out,' I said, patting his arm.

'I hope you're right,' he said between his teeth. 'I hope to God you're right.' He was looking at me and his eyes were bright like coals. 'All that effort… to put her on the Minkies… wasted. My God! I could—' And there he stopped and his eyes, looking past me, widened, and I turned to find Janet Taggart coming straight towards us.

I once saw a painting entitled 'Vengeance'. I can't remember the artist's name and it doesn't matter now, because I know it wasn't any good. Vengeance should be painted the way Janet Taggart looked. She was pale as death, and in the pallor of her frozen face her eyes were enormous. She stopped just in front of him and struck out at him blindly.

I don't remember her words now — they came in a great overwhelming torrent of cutting, lacerating sentences. I saw Patch's eyes go dead as he flinched before the whiplash of her tongue, and then I left them, walking quickly, wanting to get the picture of the two of them right out of my mind. I wondered if she knew what power she had to hurt the man.

We had a quick lunch and returned to the court, and on the stroke of two Bowen-Lodge took his place on the judge's seat. There were five men at the Press desk now. They were gathering like vultures at the smell of news. 'With your permission, Mr Learned Chairman,' Holland said, rising. 'I propose to proceed with the other evidence in order that the Court shall have a complete picture.'

Bowen-Lodge nodded. 'I think that a very proper course, Mr Holland. Your first witness must, however, remain in the court. Those representing the various interested parties will, I know, wish to put further questions to him.'

I had expected Higgins to be the next witness. Instead, Holland called for 'Harold Lowden' and I suddenly realised that I still hadn't made up my mind what I was going to say. Hal stood in the witness box, very erect, very much the soldier, and in short, clipped sentences told of our encounter with the Mary Deare and how we had found her abandoned the following morning. And when he stepped down it was my turn and I found myself automatically crossing the court and taking my stand in the witness box. I was in a cold sweat.

I repeated the oath and then Holland was facing me, smooth and urbane, asking me in that soft, bored voice of his whether I was John Henry Sands, my business and background and why I was sailing the yacht Sea Witch in that area of the Channel on the night of March 18th. And as I gave the answers, I could hear the nervousness in my voice. The court was very silent. Bowen-Lodge's small gimlet eyes watched me and Holland stood there in front of me, waiting to prompt me with questions, to probe if necessary.

Across the court I saw Patch, sitting a little forward, his hands clasped, his body tense and rigid. His eyes were fixed on my face. I was telling them what the Mary Deare had looked like that morning when I boarded her, and suddenly my mind was made up. To tell them that the ship was stranded on the Minkies would prove him a liar. It would cut the ground from under his feet. I couldn't do it. I think I had known that all along, but the strange thing was that, once I had made the decision, all nervousness left me. I knew what I was going to say and I set out to present Patch to the Court as I had seen him through those desperate hours — a man, staggering with exhaustion, who had put out a fire single-handed and could still go on fighting to save his ship.

I told them about the bruise on his jaw, about the coal dust and the smoke-blackened haggardness of his face. I told them how we'd sweated down there in the stoke-hold to raise steam on that one boiler, how we'd got the pumps going, how we'd used the engines to keep her stern to the wind and how the seas had swept across her submerged bows in thundering cataracts of white water. And I left it at that, simply saying that we had finally abandoned her on the morning of the second day.

The questions started then. Had Patch made any comments to me about the crew having abandoned ship? Could I give the Court any idea of the Mary Deare's position at the time we had taken to the dinghy? Did I think that, if there had been no gale, the ship could have safely got to some port?

Sir Lionel Falcett rose to his feet and put the same questions that Snetterton had asked me — about the cargo, the holds, Patch. 'You lived with this man through a desperate forty-eight hours. You shared his fears and his hopes. Surely he must have said something, made some comment?' And I replied that we had had little opportunity for talking. I told them again of our exhaustion, the fury of the seas, the moment-to-moment fear that the ship would go down under us.

And then suddenly it was over and I walked back across the floor of the court, feeling like a rag that has been squeezed dry. Hal gripped my arm as I sat down. 'Magnificent!' he whispered. 'You've damn' near made a hero of the man. Look at the Press desk.' And I saw that it was emptying hurriedly.

'Ian Fraser!' Holland was on his feet again and Captain Fraser was making his way across the court.

It was routine evidence of how he had picked us up, and then he was released and Janet Taggart was called.

She went into the witness box pale as death, but with her head up and her face a tight little defensive mask. Holland explained that he had called her at this stage in order to release her from the painful ordeal of listening to any further statements that might be made by witnesses about her father. He then took her gently through a description of her father as she had known him — his letters, coming unfailingly from every port he visited, his presents, the money to take her on from college to university, his care of her after the death of her mother when she was seven. 'I never knew how wonderful he had been as a father until these last few years, when I was old enough to understand how he must have scraped and saved and worked to give me the education I've had.' She described him as she had last seen him, and then she read the letter he had written her from Rangoon. She read it in a small, trembling voice, and his love and concern for her were there in every line of it.

It was very painful to hear her, knowing the man was dead, and when she had finished there was a murmur of men clearing their throats and shifting uneasily in their seats.

'That will be all, Miss Taggart,' Holland said with that gentleness that he had used with her throughout her evidence. But she didn't move from the witness box. She had taken a picture postcard from her bag and she stood with it clutched in her hand, looking across at Patch. And the look on her face sent a cold shiver through me, as she said, 'A few days ago I received a postcard from Aden. It had been delayed in the post.' She shifted her gaze to Bowen-Lodge. 'It's from my father. May I read part of it please?'

He nodded his permission and she went on: 'My father wrote: "The owner has engaged a man called Patch to be my first officer in place of poor old Adams."' She wasn't reading it. She was staring straight at Bowen-Lodge, the postcard still gripped in her hand. She knew it by heart.' "I do not know what will come of this. Rumour has it that he stranded a ship once, deliberately. But whatever happens I promise you it shall not be of my doing. God go with you, Janie, and think of me. If all goes well, I shall keep my promise this time and see you again at the end of the voyage."' Her voice broke on a whisper. The court held its breath. She was like a spring coiled. too tight and near to breaking.

She held the card out to Holland and he took it. 'Witness is excused,' Bowen-Lodge said. But she had turned and was facing Patch across the court. Wildly she accused him of dragging her father's name in the mud to save himself. She had checked on the loss of the Belle Isle. She knew the truth now and she was going to see that the Court knew it. Bowen-Lodge beat on his desk with his gavel. Holland was at her side, remonstrating with her. But she ignored him, and Patch sat there, white-faced and appalled, as she blamed him for the fires, for the flooded holds, for the whole wreckage of her father's ship. 'You're a monster,' she sobbed as they dragged her from the witness box. And then she went suddenly limp and allowed herself to be hurried out of the court, her whole body convulsed with the passion of her tears.

The courtroom eased itself a little self-consciously. Nobody looked at Patch. Nobody looked anywhere until Bowen-Lodge's matter-of-fact voice lifted the tension from the room. 'Call the next witness.'

'Donald Masters!' Holland was in his place again. The court began to get back into its stride. Technical witnesses followed, giving details of the ship and its equipment, passing judgment on its age and condition, with depositions sworn by the surveyor in Yokohama and the Lloyd's official who had issued her load-line certificate. Another by the Docks Superintendent at Rangoon giving information about the Torre Annunziata and the adjustments to her cargo. And then Holland called 'Angela Petrie' and the court, predominantly male, stirred with interest as Mrs Petrie went into the witness box.

She explained that the Dellimare Trading and Shipping Company had been formed as a private limited company in 1947 with Mr Dellimare, a Mr Greenly and herself as directors. It had been entirely a trading concern, specialising in the import-export business, chiefly with India and the Far East. Later Mr Greenly had ceased to be a director and Mr Gundersen, who had operated a similar type of business in Singapore, had joined the board, the capital had been increased and the business considerably expanded. She gave figures, producing them from memory with quiet efficiency.

'And the position of the Company now?' Holland asked.

'It's in process of being wound-up — a voluntary liquidation.'

'And that was arranged before Mr Dellimare's death?'

'Oh yes, it was decided some months back.'

'Any particular reason?'

She hesitated, and then said, 'There were certain tax advantages.'

A little murmur of laughter ran round the court and Holland sat down. Almost immediately Patch's lawyer was on his feet, a thin, dried-up man with a reedy voice. 'Mr Learned Chairman, I should like to ask the witness whether she is aware that Mr Dellimare was involved, just before the formation of this Company, in a case of fraudulent conversion?'

Bowen-Lodge frowned. 'I do not regard that as relevant, Mr Fenton,' he said acidly.

'I should like to answer that question.' Mrs Petrie's voice was bold and clear and vibrant. 'He was acquitted. It was a malicious accusation with no shred of evidence to support it.'

Fenton sat down a little hurriedly and Sir Lionel Falcett rose. 'Mr Learned Chairman, I should like to know from the witness whether any ships were purchased by the Company at the time of its formation?'

Bowen-Lodge put the question and Mrs Petrie answered 'None'.

'You hadn't the capital, is that it?' Sir Lionel asked. And when she agreed, he said, 'In point of fact, it was quite a small business?'

'Yes.'

'Then why call it the Dellimare Trading and Shipping Company? Surely it was a rather unnecessarily grandiose title?'

'Oh, well, you see, Mr Dellimare was always very keen about ships, and being ex-Navy and all that, he hoped one day… Anyway,' she added, with a flash of pride, 'we did finish up by owning ships.'

'You had the Mary Deare and the Torre Annunziata. Any others?'

She shook her head. 'No. Just those two.'

Sir Lionel glanced down at his papers. 'The purchase of the Mary Deare was completed on June 18 of last year. When was the Torre Annunziata purchased?'

For the first time Mrs Petrie showed a slight hesitation. 'I can't remember exactly.'

'Was it in April of last year?'

'I don't remember.'

'But you are a director of the Company and this must have involved a considerable amount of finance. Do you mean to say you have no records of the transactions?' Sir Lionel's voice had sharpened slightly.

'I may have. I don't know.' And then she added quickly, 'We were expanding fast at that time and it was all fixed up at the Singapore end.'

'And you were not kept fully informed, is that it?' She nodded and he then asked, 'At what date did Mr Gundersen join the board?'

'On March 2 of last year,'

'So that these shipping transactions were a result of his joining the board?'

'Yes, I suppose so.'

Sir Lionel turned to the Chairman. 'There is just one more question I should like to put to the witness. As the Court is already aware, the Mary Deare was making just this one voyage and was then being sold for scrap. The Torre Annunziata made only two voyages and then she was sold to the Chinese. I should like to know what the margin of profit was on these transactions.'

Bowen-Lodge put the question, but she shook her head. She didn't know.

'What was the cost of acquiring these ships, then?' Sir Lionel put the question to her direct.

'No figures have yet been passed across to our office.'

'And I suppose you have' no idea who put up the money?'

She shook her head. 'I'm afraid I don't know. It was all arranged at the Singapore end.'

Sir Lionel nodded and sat down. Mrs Petrie was released from the witness box and she walked back across the court. I saw that her eyes were fixed on someone just behind me, and I guessed it must be Gundersen. Her face was very white and she looked scared.

Hal leaned across to me. 'Looks as though Lionel is mounting an attack on the Company,' he whispered, and I nodded, thinking that perhaps Patch was saving his announcement of Dellimare's offer until he was questioned by Sir Lionel. It seemed reasonable. And that question by his lawyer, Fenton — it had been clumsily done, but he had made his point.

Perfume wafted over me as Mrs Petrie resumed her seat, and I heard Gundersen's voice, cold and angry, say, 'Why didn't you tell him? I gave you those figures weeks back.' And she answered him in a whisper: 'How can I think of figures now?'

And then Holland called 'Hans Gundersen'.

He described himself as a financier and company director and he made a strong impression on the court. He was a business man and he had all his facts and figures at his finger-tips. Without any prompting from Holland he explained to the Court exactly why he had joined the Company, why they had acquired the Mary Deare and the Torre Annunziata, how the purchases had been financed and what the expected profits were.

He explained his interest in the Dellimare Company in the cold, hard language of business. He had many interests in Singapore and other ports in the Far East. It suited his interests at that time to take a hand in the affairs of this small company. He had the chance to acquire two old ships at a very low figure. He had taken the view that freight rates were on the mend and that in a year's time it would be possible to sell the ships at a handsome profit. He had chosen the Dellimare Company as the medium through which to make the purchase because he knew Mr Dellimare and discovered that he was willing to have the Company wound up at the end of the transaction. 'In my experience,' he added, 'that is much the most remunerative way of engaging in these operations.' In the case of the Torre Annttnziata his object had been achieved. They had sold the ship to the Chinese at a figure much higher than the purchase price. The Mary Deare, however, had not proved such a good proposition. Her condition had been worse than he had been led to believe. The result was that he had decided that she should make one voyage and then be sold for scrap in England. Break-up price less purchase price and overhaul would have given the Dellimare Company a small margin of profit plus the profits of the voyage. He handed Holland a slip of paper. 'Those are the figures, actual and estimated,' he said.

Holland passed them up to Bowen-Lodge and then sat down. The Chairman checked through the figures, nodded and glanced towards Sir Lionel, who rose and said, 'I should like to know from the witness who financed the acquisition of these ships and how exactly he stood to gain from the deal.'

Bowen-Lodge put the question and Gundersen replied, 'Of course. I financed the operation myself. In return I was allotted all the shares of the increased capital of the Company.'

'In other words,' Sir Lionel said, 'your motive for becoming a director of this company was profit?'

'Naturally. I am a business man, sir.'

'I appreciate that.' Sir Lionel smiled drily. 'Now, about the Mary Deare. You have admitted that she was not in the condition you had hoped. How was it that such a valuable cargo was entrusted to her? Did Mr Dellimare arrange that?'

'No. I arranged it through my contacts in Singapore. You must understand that I am very well known in business circles there.'

'One further question. For what reason were these two ships — the Mary Deare and the Torre Annunziata — routed in such a way that they were in the Rangoon River together from January 7th to 11th?'

'I don't understand the reason for your question, sir,' Gundersen replied. 'Mr Dellimare looked after all the details of the Company management. If a ship is sailing from England to China and another from Japan to Antwerp, then they will cross somewhere.'

Sir Lionel asked him a number of further questions, but Gundersen refused to admit any responsibility for the details of ships' schedules. 'You must understand that I have many calls on my time. This was a very small business. I do not concern myself with the day-to-day management of affairs of companies I am interested in.'

'But you flew all the way from Singapore as soon as you heard what had happened to the Mary Deare and have remained in this country ever since.'

'Of course. I am a director of the Company and this is a serious business. When something goes wrong, then it is necessary to be on the spot. Particularly as Mr Dellimare is dead.'

'One final question; why was it necessary for Mr Dellimare to travel on the Mary Deare as supercargo. Surely in these days it is very unusual?'

Gundersen shrugged his shoulders. 'Mr Dellimare was in Yokohama to arrange all the details. I don't think he was a rich man, and it is cheaper to travel a long distance like that in your own ship.'

There were no further questions and Gundersen stood down. He was dressed now in a dark-grey double-breasted suit, obviously cut by a London tailor, and he looked a typical English business man — quiet, remote, competent.

More technical evidence followed, and then Bowen-Lodge adjourned the court. 'Tomorrow at ten-thirty, gentlemen.'

As I followed Hal into the corridor, a hand plucked at my sleeve. 'You're Mr Sands, aren't you?' A little, grey-haired woman was smiling up at me a little uncertainly.

'Yes,' I said. There was something about her face that I seemed to recognise.

'I thought you were, but I'm never quite certain about people — my eyes, you know. I just wanted to tell you how glad I am he has one good friend in all this terrible business. You were splendid, Mr Sands.'

I saw the likeness then. 'You're his mother, aren't you?' I was looking round for Patch, but she said, 'Please. He doesn't know I'm here. He'd be terribly angry. When he came down to see me at Bridgewater, he didn't tell me anything about it. But I knew at once that he was in trouble.' She gave a little sigh. 'It was the first time I had seen him in seven years. That's a long time, Mr Sands, for an old body like me. I only had the one, you see — just Gideon. And now that his father's dead…' She smiled and patted my arm. 'But there, you don't want to hear about my troubles. I just wanted you to know that I'm glad he's got one good friend.' She looked up at me. 'It will be all right this time… you do think so, don't you, Mr Sands?'

'I'm sure it will,' I murmured. 'Sir Lionel Falcett is obviously concentrating on the cargo and the Company.'

'Yes. Yes, that's what I thought.'

I offered to see her to her hotel, but she wouldn't hear of it and left me with a brave little smile, moving along with the crowd. Hal joined me then and we went out to his car. I caught a glimpse of her standing, waiting for a bus. She was off-guard then, and she looked lonely and a little frightened.

Hal offered to put me up for the night and we collected my suitcase from the station and drove down to his house at Bosham, a small, thatched place with a lawn running down to the water. I had bought an evening paper in Southampton; it was all over the front page and three columns of it inside — Captain's Daughter Breaks Down at Enquiry; Strange Story of Loss of Mary Deare.

It wasn't until after dinner that Hal began to ask me specific questions about Patch. At length he said, 'That day you rejoined us at Peter Port — you didn't say very much about him.' He was standing by the window, looking out across the lawn to where the water was a milky blur in the dusk. There were a couple of yachts moored out there and their masts were bobbing to the lop and the wind gusts. He turned and looked at me. 'You knew about the Belle Isle business then, didn't you?'

I nodded, wondering what was coming. It was very cosy in that room with its lamps and its glimmer of Eastern brass and the big tiger skins on the floor, very remote from all that I had lived with during the past two months. Even the glass of port in my hand seemed part of the illusion of being in another world.

He came and sat down opposite me. 'Look, old chap,' he said. 'I don't want to pry into what, after all, is your concern. But just how sure are you about this fellow?'

'How do you mean?'

'Well, you've got to be damn' sure about a man… I mean… He hesitated, searching for the words he wanted. 'Well, put it this way. If Patch wrecked that ship — deliberately wrecked her — then it was murder. They may only be able to pin a charge of manslaughter on him in law, but before God he'd be guilty of murder.'

'He didn't do it,' I said.

'You're sure of that?'

'Absolutely.' And having said that, I sat back, wondering why I'd said it, why I was so certain.

'I'm glad,' Hal said. 'Because, you know, all the time you were in the witness box, I was conscious that you were defending him. You were selecting your evidence, keeping things back, and at times you were a little scared. Oh, you needn't worry. I don't think anybody else noticed it. I noticed it because I know you and because at Peter Port, when you'd had less time to think it all out, you were so obviously covering up.' He paused and sipped his port. 'Go carefully, though,' he added. 'I know Lionel Falcett. Member of my club. Seen him in action, too. Don't let him get his claws into you.'

CHAPTER THREE

It was still blowing and the streets were wet as we drove to the court the following morning. Proceedings started sharp at ten-thirty with evidence about the cargo. And then a doctor was called who showed that it was quite possible for a man who lived on nothing but liquor to die for lack of it. Through all this the courtroom was restless as though waiting for something. The public gallery was packed, the Press desk crammed. And then at last Holland called 'Alfred Higgins' and, as Higgins thrust his huge bulk into the witness box, there was a sudden, expectant hush, so that the sound (X a clock striking eleven was quite audible through the taking of the oath.

He was forty-three years old, Higgins told the Treasury Counsel, and, when asked for his qualifications, he explained that he'd started life on his father's barge, sailing the East Coast ports until he was fifteen; then he'd got mixed up in some smuggling racket and had stowed away on a banana boat. He'd stayed at sea after that, moving from ship to ship across the traffic lanes of the world — square-riggers, tramps and liners, tugs and coasters; he rolled the names of them out of his great barrel of a body like pages picked at random from Lloyd's Register.

He began his story back where the Mary Deare steamed out of Yokohama. According to him, the ship was a floating deathtrap of rattling rivets and clanging plates, a piece of leaking ironmongery taken off the junk-heap of the China Seas. Of the captain, he simply said, 'The 'ole ship knew 'e was drinking 'isself ter death.' The first mate was sickening for jaundice and the third officer, Rice, was only a kid of twenty-four on his second voyage with a watch-keeper's certificate. The implication was that he, Higgins, was the only reliable deck officer on board, and though he looked like a bull about to charge, there was something impressive about him as he stood there and gave his evidence in a throaty rumble.

Singapore, Rangoon, Aden — and then he was covering the same ground that Patch had covered, but from a different angle. He thought the crew 'not bad considerin' the moth-eaten sort o' a tub she was'. Patch he regarded as 'a bit pernickity-like' and added, 'But that's ter be expected when a man wiv 'is record gets command again.'

And then up through the Bay of Biscay the Court got little glimpses of Patch, nervous, over-bearing, at odds with the owner, with his officers — 'All 'cept Rice. 'E was the white-headed boy, as the sayin' is.' And when it came to the gale itself and the ship down by the bows and the radio shack gutted by fire, Higgins didn't give it graphically as Patch had done, but baldly, factually. He had been asleep in his bunk when the hold had started to flood. He had taken over the bridge and had remained on watch until 10.00 hours the following morning — eleven solid hours. He had then organised a more thorough search for Dellimare. No, Mr Patch hadn't ordered him to. He'd done it on his own initiative, having been relieved. He couldn't believe that Dellimare 'who was Navy an' a good bloke on a ship' could have gone overboard. Altogether he had been forty-two hours without sleep.

'You liked Mr Dellimare?' Holland asked him.

'I didn't like or dislike 'im. I jus' said 'e was a good bloke, an' so 'e was.'

'Did you advise Mr Patch at one stage to abandon ship?'

'Well, yes, in a manner o' speakin'. We considered it, Mr Dellimare an' me.'

'Why?'

'Cos we knew the sort o' ship she was. We'd bin through two gales already comin' across from Singapore. Patch 'adn't. An' the one in the Bay was a lot worse than wot we'd gone through before.'

'And you thought an explosion had occurred in the for'ard hold?'

'I didn't think nothin' of the kind. I knew she was rotten an' we were takin' a helluva pounding. We didn't think she'd stand much more.' And then he said, 'If you're suggesting we were scared, just remember what it was like out there. Ten to one the boats wouldn't 've got launched in that sea, let alone stayed afloat. It took guts to even think 'o takin' ter the boats, pertikly fer Mr Dellimare who'd had a basinful o' that sort o' thing during the war. Later, when we 'ove-to, things was easier an' I thought maybe we had a chance.'

And then he was dealing with the night the fire had broken out in the after hold and they had abandoned ship. Yes, it had been about 21.20 hours. It was a stoker who had discovered it, a man called West. He'd come out of the after deckhouse and had seen smoke coming from the hatch of Number Three hold. He'd reported at once to the bridge by phone. Rice had been there at the time and Higgins had sent him to check the report and notify Mr Patch. Not once in his evidence did he refer to Patch as the captain.

'And what happened then?' Holland asked him.

'I didn't hear nothin' further for about quarter of an hour. But I knew it was fire orl right 'cos the after derrick lights was switched on an' there was a lot of activity with men running about the deck. Then Mr Patch comes up to the bridge lookin' very wild and all covered in smoke grime an' says he's ordered the boats swung out just in case. I asked him whether he'd like me ter take charge of the fire-fighting party and he said No, Mr Rice was in charge. He stood aba't fer a bit after that as though he couldn't make up his mind aba't somethin'. An' after a bit Rice comes runnin' up to the bridge in a bit of a panic an' says the fire's getting worse. And at that Patch orders him to pass the word to stand by to abandon ship. "You notify the engine-room, Mr Higgins," he says. "Then take charge of the fire-fighting party. Mr Rice, you'll have charge of the upper deck. See there's no panic when I give the word." An' that's the last I saw of him,' Higgins added.

The rest was a pattern of disaster that comes from absence of command. Higgins and his men had fought the fire for a further fifteen minutes or so, and all the time it seemed to be gaining on them. The men were scared. They believed the ship was jinxed, that the cargo was explosives. Higgins sent Rice to tell Patch he couldn't hold the men much longer and Rice came back to say he couldn't find Patch anywhere. 'By then the men were near ter panic. Some were already on the upper deck, piling into Number Three boat. There weren't nothing I could do 'cept give the order to abandon ship.'

The order had resulted in a stampede for the boats. When he reached the upper deck, Higgins saw Number Three boat hanging by its bow falls with one man clinging to it. Number One boat had also been cleared. She was empty and being battered to pieces against the ship's side. By using his fists he'd got some sort of order out of the chaos on deck and he and the officers had organised the men into the two remaining boats. He had put Rice in charge of Number Four boat and had waited to see him safely clear. He had then lowered and released his own boat. Owing to the speed at which the ship was travelling he had lost contact with Rice by the time his boat hit the water and he never regained it.

'Do you mean to say,' Holland asked, 'that you took to the boats with the ship still steaming?'

'Yes. Acting on Mr Patch's instructions I had ordered the engine-room staff to stand by to take to the boats. When I gave the order to abandon, they didn't 'ave no instructions about stopping the engines an' afterwards none o' 'em would go below to do it.'

'But surely if you gave the order—'

'What the hell use were orders?' Higgins growled. 'Patch'd gone — vanished. One boat was already hanging in her davits, the men in her all tipped into the sea; another was bein' smashed up alongside. The men were panicking. Anybody who went below stood a good chance of coming up and finding the last two boats gone. It was as much as Rice an' I could do ter get those boats away orderly-like.'

'But good heavens!' Holland exclaimed. 'Surely, as an experienced officer, you had some control over your—'

But Higgins interrupted him again. 'Ain't you got no imagination?' he burst out. 'Can't you see what it was like — Patch gone and the crew in a panic and a fire raging on top of a cargo of explosives.'

'But it wasn't explosives.'

'Ow were we ter know?'

'You've heard the evidence proving that the cases loaded at Yokohama contained aero engines. There was no justification for believing—'

'We know now they was full of aero engines,'

Higgins said quickly. 'But I'm telling you wot we thought at the time. We thought they was full of explosives.'

'But you'd seen the manifest,' Holland reminded him. 'Mr Patch even posted a copy of it on the crew's notice board.'

'What difference does that make?' Higgins demanded angrily. 'A crew don't 'ave ter believe everything that's posted on their notice board. An' let me tell you, mister, men that sail in ships like the Mary Deare don't go much by the manifest, pertickly in the China Seas. We may be uneddicated, but we ain't stupid. A manifest is just a piece of paper somebody's written what he wants believed on. Least, that's the way I look at it — an' I've me reasons for doin' so.'

There was no answer to that. The outburst called for a rebuke from the Chairman, but it was given mildly. Higgins was accepted for what he was, a piece of human flotsam speaking with the voice of experience. In a sense he was magnificent. He dominated that drab court. But not by the power of his personality, which was crude. He dominated it because he was different, because he was the obverse of the coin of human nature, a colourful, lawless buccaneer who didn't give a damn for authority.

'In other words,' Holland said, 'you've known a lot of strange things happen aboard ships around the world. Now, have you ever known a stranger set of circumstances than those that happened aboard the Mary Deare?

Higgins pursed his lips, then shook his head. 'No, I can't say I 'ave.'

'Take the flooding of the for'ard holds. You say you didn't think it was an explosion of some sort.'

'I didn't say nuthing of the kind. I said I didn't think about it, not at the time. There was a lot of other things ter think aba't. Anyway, I wasn't on the bridge.'

'And what's your opinion now?'

Higgins shook his head. 'I don't know wot ter think.'

'And what about the fires? Were they natural outbreaks?'

'Ah, the fires — that's different.' His cunning little eyes darted a glance to where Patch sat, watching him with a tense face.

'You think they were started deliberately?'

'Yes, I reckon so.'

'You suspect somebody then?'

'I don't know about that. But,' he added, 'I knew we was in fer trouble as soon as 'e come aboard.' And he nodded his hard bollard of a head towards Patch. 'Stands ter reason, a man wiv 'is record don't get the job fer nuthing — and then the skipper dying so convenient-like.'

'Are you blaming somebody for Captain Taggart's death?' There was a note of censure in Holland's voice.

'I ain't blamin' anyone. But somebody swiped the poor devil's liquor and all I say is it only did one man any good.'

An excited buzz ran round the court as Holland sat down. Fenton was immediately on his feet. It was a disgraceful allegation, made without a shred of evidence to support it. And the Chairman agreed, leaning forward and asking Higgins whether it wasn't true that Taggart had accused several of the officers. And when Higgins admitted that it was, he said, 'Yourself as well?'

'The poor devil was ravin',' Higgins declared angrily.

'So he's raving when he accuses you, but not when he accuses Mr Patch, is that it?' Bowen-Lodge's voice was icy.

'Well, it didn't do me no good, him dying,' Higgins muttered.

'I put it to you that Captain Taggart just ran out of liquor.'

But Higgins shook his head. 'There was a lot of stuff brought off to 'im by a ship's chandler in Aden. 'E couldn't 've drunk it all in the time. It weren't 'umingly possible.'

'What did you think about it at the time? Did you take his accusations seriously?'

'No, why should I? When a man's ravin' the way he was, you don't know wot ter believe.' Higgins had a baffled look as though he wasn't sure where the questions were leading. 'Mebbe 'e 'ad liquor, an' mebbe 'e didn't,' he muttered hoarsely. 'Mebbe somebody pinched it — I dunno. All I know is, we searched the 'ole bloomin' ship fer 'im, jus' ter make 'im 'appy, 'an we didn't find a single bottle wot belonged to 'im.

'Course,' he added, 'if we'd known as 'ow 'e was goin' ter die fer lack of the stuff, there's some of us, as was plannin' ter smuggle the odd bottle through the Customs, who'd 've chipped in ter 'elp 'im, as the sayin' is.'

Bowen-Lodge nodded and Fenton started to question Higgins, trying to get him to admit that Patch had never given the order to stand by to abandon ship, trying to confuse him and break him down over little details. But Higgins was a dangerous witness to cross-examine. He made it clear with every answer that he didn't trust Patch, and he didn't budge an inch from his original testimony.

But with Sir Lionel it was different. His interest was the cargo. What had led the witness to believe that the cases loaded at Yokohama contained explosives? Had he discovered something whilst he was loading the cases? But when the Chairman put the question, Higgins said he hadn't been a member of the ship's company at the time the cases were loaded.

'When did your employment as second officer commence then?' Bowen-Lodge asked.

'The day before the ship sailed,' Higgins answered. 'By then she was all loaded up, hatches battened down an' lying out in the fairway.'

'You were shown the manifest?'

'No. I never saw the manifest, not till later.'

'Then what gave you the idea that the cargo contained explosives?'

'There was rumours around the docks.'

'And amongst the crew?'

'Yes.'

'Have you ever known explosives packed in cases clearly marked as aero engines?'

'Not exactly. But I've heard of explosives bein' packed and marked as other things, to avoid the regulations as you might say.'

'But you had no definite indication that the cases might contain other than what was stated on the manifest?'

'No.'

'And you did your utmost to scotch this rumour?'

For the first time Higgins showed uncertainty. 'Well no, to be honest I can't say I did.'

'Why not?'

The muscles along Higgins's neck thickened. 'Well, if it comes ter that, why should I? Wasn't none of my business.'

Bowen-Lodge glanced across at Sir Lionel with one eyebrow raised. The next question concerned the four days the ship was moored in the Rangoon River. Yes, Higgins admitted, he had gone ashore with the rest. Well, why not? it wasn't every day the owners gave a ship's company forty-eight hours ashore, expenses paid. The reason? Mr Dellimare was a good bloke, that's why — knew how to treat a crew, believed in a happy ship.

'When you got back to the ship' — Sir Lionel was now putting his questions direct to the witness again — 'did you talk to any of the officers or men of the Torre Annunziata?'

'Yes. The first officer, a bloke called Slade, came aboard for a drink wiv me and the Chief.'

'Did you ask them why they had been shifting cargo around?'

'No. But Slade tol' me they'd 'ad ter do it because of some clerical mess-up over the destination of the steel tubes they were due to load.'

'Did you talk to Adams about it?'

'No.'

'But you saw him when you got back on board?'

'Yes.'

'Did he suggest that the crew of the Torre Annunziata had been tampering with the Mary Deare's cargo?'

'No.' And then he added quickly, 'An' if they 'ad, 'e'd 've known about it 'cos when I saw 'im, 'e was up an' about an' feelin' better fer 'is two days in bed.'

'Adams being sick, I take it you were in charge of the loading of the cotton cargo?' Higgins nodded and Sir Lionel then asked him, 'Did you notice any change in the disposition of the cargo?'

'No, can't say I did.'

'You're quite certain?'

'Course I'm certain.'

Sir Lionel's small head shot forward and his voice was suddenly crisp and hard as he said, 'How could you be? You said you joined the ship after she was loaded?'

But Higgins wasn't easily put out. His tongue passed over the dry line of his lips. But that was the only sign of uneasiness he gave. 'I may not 've bin there when she was loaded. But I was when we discharged our top cargo of Japanese cotton an' rayon goods. I took special note of 'ow the cases was stowed 'cos I guessed I'd 'ave to load the bales of raw cotton when they was ready.'

Sir Lionel nodded. 'Just one more question. You say you didn't go aboard the Mary Deare until the day before she sailed. How was that?'

'Well, I wasn't took on till then.'

'Who engaged you — Captain Taggart?'

'No, Mr Dellimare. Oh, Captain Taggart signed the papers. But it was Dellimare wot engaged me.'

'Why?'

Higgins frowned. 'Ow d'you mean?'

'I asked you why he engaged you. Were you the only man who applied for the vacancy?'

'Well, not exactly. I mean…' Higgins glanced round the court and again his tongue passed along his lips. 'It didn't 'appen like that.'

'You mean the job wasn't offered in the usual way? You were engaged by Mr Dellimare privately?'

'I suppose so.' Higgins sounded reluctant.

'Perhaps you would be good enough to explain to the Court how it happened.'

Higgins hesitated. 'Well, we 'appened ter meet, as you might say, an'

'e was short of a second officer an' I wanted a berth, an' that's all there was to it.'

'Where did you meet?'

'Some bar da'n by the waterfront. Don't remember the name of it.'

'By arrangement?'

Higgins's face was reddening, the muscles on his neck swelling. 'Yes, by arrangement.' He said it angrily as though challenging Sir Lionel to make something of it.

But Sir Lionel only said, 'Thank you. That was what I wanted to know.' And sat down. He had established two things: that, if the Dellimare Company were planning to wreck the Mary Deare, the vital shift of cargo was a possibility, and that Higgins could have been the instrument of their choice. But he had nothing definite against Higgins and that, he admitted to Hal long afterwards, was the real trouble. To justify his clients in withholding payment of the insurance claim he had to have something more positive.

It was the evidence of the other survivors that finally decided him, and the most damaging evidence was that of the helmsman, Yules, who had been on the bridge with Higgins when the fire broke out. He was timid and he gave his evidence with a slight stutter. He wasn't a very strong witness, but he clung to his statement that Patch had given the order to stand by to abandon ship with unshakeable obstinacy. He even had the words off pat, and though Patch's counsel rose to the occasion and had him so terrified that he kept on looking to Higgins for support, he never budged.

He was the last witness before lunch and I didn't need Hal to tell me that Patch would have a bad time of it when he took the stand for examination by the various counsel. The Court hadn't begun to get at the truth yet. But what was the truth? Hal asked me that over lunch and all I could say was, 'God knows.'

'Dellimare couldn't have started that fire in the hold,' he said, and I agreed. Dellimare was dead by then. It had to be Higgins. Evidently Bowen-Lodge had also considered this possibility over his lunch, for, when the Court reassembled, he had Yules recalled and questioned him closely about the movements of the officer of the watch. And Yules swore that Higgins had been on the bridge from 20.00 hours and hadn't once left it. Later, Burrows, the chief engineer officer, testified that Higgins had been playing poker with him and two members of the crew who had been drowned, from 17.00 hours to 20.00 hours with only a brief break for food.

One after the other the survivors went into the witness box, each from his different angle corroborating what had gone before — the certainty that the ship was jinxed, that she carried explosives and that she was destined to go to the bottom. It was the story of men carrying within themselves the seeds of inevitable tragedy.

And then at last 'Holland called 'Gideon Patch' and he was standing there in the witness box again, slightly stooped, his hands gripping the rail, knuckles as white as the pallor of his face. He looked worried sick and the twitch was there at the corner of his mouth.

Bowen-Lodge questioned him first — questioned him in minute detail about the orders he had given after the fire broke out. He had him go through the whole thing again from the moment Rice had rushed into his cabin to report the outbreak. Then, when Patch had told it exactly as he'd told it before, Bowen-Lodge gave a little shrug and Holland took up the questioning again. And all the time it was obvious that something was being kept back. You could sense it in the way the man stood there with that hunted look on his face and his body all tense and trembling. And the questions went back and forth with nobody making any sense out of it and Patch sticking to his statement that he had been knocked out and that the fire had been started deliberately.

'Yes, but by whom?' Bowen-Lodge demanded.

And Patch had answered in a flat, colourless voice, 'That is for the Court to decide.'

After that the ball had been tossed to the counsel representing the interested parties and they hounded him with questions about Taggart and Dellimare, about his handling of the crew, about the seaworthiness of the ship, and then finally the counsel for the Marine Officers' Association was on his feet, going back once again over the orders he'd given the night the ship was abandoned, and Bowen-Lodge was beginning to glance at the clock.

At last Sir Lionel rose, and his questions were all about the cargo. If Patch could have said that those cases were empty or contained something other than aero engines, that would have been that and Sir Lionel would have been satisfied. But he couldn't say it and the questions went on and on until Sir Lionel had exhausted all the possibilities. He paused then and seemed on the point of sitting down. He was bending forward, peering at some notes and he looked up over his reading glasses and said, 'Perhaps, Mr Learned Chairman, you would ask the witness to tell me how he came to be on the Mary Deare.'

The question was put and Patch answered, quite unsuspecting, that he thought he had already explained that he had replaced Mr Adams who had been taken to hospital suffering from jaundice.

'Yes, yes, quite,' Sir Lionel said impatiently. 'What I meant was, who signed you on — Captain Taggart or Mr Dellimare?'

'Captain Taggart.'

'He came ashore and made the choice himself?'

'No.'

'Who did come ashore then and make the choice?' Sir Lionel's voice still sounded bored. He gave the impression that he was dealing with a small routine point.

'Mr Dellimare.'

'Mr Dellimare?' Sir Lionel's face was suddenly expressive of surprise. 'I see. And was it done privately, a meeting in some bar — by arrangement?' His tone carried the bite of sarcasm in it.

'No. We met at the agents'.'

'At the agents'? Then there were probably other unemployed officers there?'

'Yes. Two.'

'Why didn't Mr Dellimare choose one of them? Why did he choose you?'

'The others withdrew when they heard that the vacancy was for the Mary Beared 'But you did not withdraw. Why?' And when Patch didn't answer, Sir Lionel said, 'I want to know why?'

'Because I needed the berth.'

'How long had you been without a ship?'

'Eleven months.'

'And before that you hadn't been able to get anything better than the job of second mate on a miserable little Italian steamer called the Apollo working the coastal ports of East Africa. Didn't you think it strange that a man with your record should suddenly find himself first officer of a 6,000-ton ocean-going ship?' And when Patch didn't say anything, Sir Lionel repeated, 'Didn't you think it strange?'

And all Patch could say, with the eyes of the whole court on him, was, 'I never considered it.'

'You — never — considered it!' Sir Lionel stared at him — the tone of his voice, the carriage of his head all indicating that he thought him a liar. And then he turned to Bowen-Lodge. 'Perhaps, Mr Learned Chairman, you would ask the witness to give a brief resume of the events that occurred on the night of 3rd/4th February nine years ago in the region of Singapore?'

Patch's grip on the rail in front of him tightened. His face looked ghastly — trapped. The courtroom stirred as though the first breath of storm had rustled through it. Bowen-Lodge looked down at the questioner. 'The Belle Isle? he enquired. And then, still in the same whisper of an aside, 'Do you consider that necessary, Sir Lionel?'

'Absolutely,' was the firm and categorical reply.

Bowen-Lodge glanced up at the clock again and then he put the question to Patch. And Patch, rigid, and tight-lipped, said, 'There was a report issued at the time, sir.'

Bowen-Lodge looked across at Sir Lionel, a mute question to discover whether he wished to pursue the matter. It was obvious that he did. You could see it in the stillness with which he watched the man in the witness box, his small head thrust forward as though about to strike. 'I am well aware that there is a report available,' he said in a cold, icy voice. 'Nevertheless, I think it right that the Court should hear the story from your own lips.'

'It's not for me to give my views on it when a Court has already pronounced judgment,' Patch said in a tight, restrained voice.

'I was not asking for your views. I was asking for a resume of the facts.'

Patch's hand hit the rail involuntarily. 'I cannot see that it has any bearing on the loss of the Mary Deare.' His voice was louder, harsher.

That is not for you to say,' Sir Lionel snapped. And then — needling him — 'There are certain similarities.'

'Similarities!' Patch stared at him. And then, beating with his hand on the rail, he burst out: 'By God, there are.' He turned to face the Chairman still angry, goaded beyond the limits of what a man will stand. 'You want the sordid details. Very well. I was drunk. Dead drunk. That's what Craven said in evidence, anyway. It was hot like the inside of an oven that day in Singapore.' He was still staring at the Chairman, but not seeing him any more, seeing only Singapore on the day he'd smashed up his career. 'Damp, sweaty, torrid heat,' he murmured. 'I remember that and I remember taking the Belle Isle out. And after that I don't remember a thing.'

'And you were drunk?' Bowen-Lodge asked. His voice was modulated, almost gentle.

'Yes, I suppose so… in a sense. I'd had a few drinks. But not enough,' Patch added violently. 'Not enough to put me out like a light.' And then, after a pause, he added, 'They ran her aground on the Anambas Islands at 02.23 hours in the morning with a thundering surf running and she broke her back.'

'You are aware,' Sir Lionel said quietly, 'that there has been a lot of talk since… suggesting that you did it for the insurance.'

Patch rounded on him. 'I could hardly be unaware of it,' he said with wild sarcasm, 'seeing that all these years I've barely been able to scratch a living in my own chosen profession.' He turned back to the Chairman, gripping hold of the rail. 'They said I ordered the course and they had the log to prove it. It was there in my own handwriting. Craven — he was the second officer — swore that he'd been down to my cabin to query it and that I'd bawled him out. Later he took a fix and then came down to my cabin to warn me again, but I was in a drunken stupor — those were his words — and when he couldn't wake me, he went back to the bridge and altered course on his own responsibility. By then, of course, it was too late. That was his story, and he stuck to it so well that everybody believed him, even my own counsel.' He turned his head and was looking across the courtroom at Higgins. 'By God,' he repeated, 'there are similarities.'

'What similarities?' Sir Lionel asked in a light tone of disbelief.

Patch turned to face him. It was pitiful to see how easily he was goaded. 'Just this,' he almost shouted. 'Craven was a liar. The log entry was forged. The Belle Isle was owned by a bunch of Greek crooks in Glasgow. They were on the verge of bankruptcy. The insurance money just about saved them. It was all in the papers six months later. That was when the rumours started.'

'And you had nothing to do with it, I suppose?' Sir Lionel asked.

'No.'

'And this man Craven had slipped a micky into your drink. Is that what you're suggesting?'

It took away from him and destroyed his defence. His muttered 'Yes' was painful anti-climax. Bowen-Lodge intervened then. 'Are you suggesting a similarity between this Greek company and the Dellimare Trading and Shipping Company?' he asked.

And Patch, fighting back, cried, 'Yes. Yes, that's exactly what I am suggesting.'

It brought the Dellimare Company's counsel on to his feet, protesting that it was a monstrous allegation, an unwarranted aspersion on a man who was dead at the time the fire broke out in the hold. And Bowen-Lodge nodded and said, 'Quite, Mr Smiles — unless there is some justification.' He turned to Patch then and said, 'Have you any reason for making such an allegation?'

Now, I thought — now he must tell them about Dellimare's offer. Whether he had evidence to support it, or not, it was the only thing for him to do. But, instead, he drove home his accusation on the basis of motive and opportunity; the Company in liquidation and the only people who would benefit by the loss of the ship. 'Why else should the owner have been on board?' he demanded. A voyage of almost five months! It was a ridiculous waste of a director's time, unless there was a reason for his being on the ship. 'And I say there was,' he declared.

Smiles jumped to his feet again, but Bowen-Lodge forestalled him. 'You seem to be forgetting the cause of the ship being abandoned and finally lost. Are you accusing Mr Dellimare of causing the fire in that after hold?'

It brought Patch up with a jolt. 'No,' he said.

'He was dead by then?'

'Yes.' Patch's voice had dropped to a whisper.

And then Smiles, still on his feet, asked what possible motive the Company could have in destroying the ship. 'She was bound for the scrap yards and in the figures Mr Gundersen has given you, Mr Learned Chairman, you will find that the scrap value was fixed at a little over £15,000. She was insured for £30,000. Is the witness suggesting that a mere £15,000 was sufficient motive to induce a company to endanger the lives of a whole ship's crew?'

'The question of motive,' Bowen-Lodge said, 'does not come within the scope of this Investigation. We are concerned solely with the facts.' He glanced towards Sir Lionel as though expecting something further from him.

'I think at this stage, Mr Learned Chairman,' Sir Lionel said, 'I should ask you to put this very serious question to the witness — Did he, or did he not, on the night of March 18, set fire to Number Three hold of the Mary Deare, or cause it to be set on fire?' A sort of gasp like an eager shudder ran through the courtroom.

The eyes of the two men, Counsel and Chairman, remained fixed on each other for a moment, and then Bowen-Lodge nodded slowly and turned to face the witness. Looking down on him and speaking quietly, but with great distinctness, he said, 'I think it my duty to tell you that in my opinion this whole matter of the loss of the Mary Deare will be the subject of a case in another Court and to advise you that you need not answer this very direct question if you do not wish to. Having so advised you, I will now put the question.' And he repeated it.

'No, I did not,' Patch declared, and his voice was clear and firm. And then he added, turning to face Sir Lionel Falcett, 'If I'd set fire to the ship, why should I go to the trouble of putting it out?'

It was a good point, but Sir Lionel only shrugged. 'We have to consider that she might have gone aground on the nearby reefs, perhaps the coast of France, only partially burned out. The evidence would be better sunk in twenty fathoms of water. There was a gale coming up and then you had Mr Sands's arrival to consider—'

Bowen-Lodge gave a discreet little warning cough and Sir Lionel murmured his apologies. The Chairman looked up at the clock again and then leaned over and conferred with his assessors. Finally he adjourned the Court. 'Until ten-thirty tomorrow, gentlemen.'

Nobody moved for a moment, and even when they did, I sat there, stunned and angry at the injustice of it. To take a man's record and fling it in his face like that, to damn him without a shred of evidence… and there was Patch still standing stiff and rigid in the witness box — and Sir Lionel, picking up his papers and smiling at some little joke made by one of the other lawyers.

Patch was moving now, crossing the floor of the court. Without thinking I started forward to meet him, but Hal put his hand on my arm. 'Better leave him now,' he said. 'He needs to think it out, poor devil.'

'Think what out?' I asked angrily. I was still wrought up by the injustice of it.

'What he's going to say tomorrow,' Hal answered.

And then he added, 'He hasn't told the whole story yet and Lionel Falcett knows it. He can tell it tomorrow, or he can tell it in the criminal courts! But he's got to tell it some time.'

The criminal courts. 'Yes, I suppose it will come to that,' I murmured. But before that, the truth had to be uncovered. And the truth, whatever it was, lay out on the Minkies. 'I must have a word with him,' I said. I had suddenly made up my mind and was forcing my way through the crowd towards Patch.

He didn't hear me when I called to him. He seemed oblivious to everything but the need to get out of the place. I caught hold of him, and he turned abruptly with a nervous start. 'Oh, it's you.' He was trembling. 'Well, what is it?'

I stared at him, horrified by the haggard, hunted look in his face. There were beads of sweat still on his forehead. 'Why in God's name didn't you tell them?' I said.

'Tell them what?' His eyes had suddenly gone blank of all expression.

'About Dellimare,' I said. 'Why didn't you tell them?'

His eyes flickered and slid away from me. 'How could I?' he breathed. And then, as I started to tell him that the Court had a right to the truth, he said, 'Leave it at that, can't you? Just leave it at that.' And he turned on his heel and walked quickly away towards the exit.

I went after him then. I couldn't leave it like that. I had to give him the chance he'd asked for. I pushed through a little knot of the Mary Deare's crew and caught him up in the corridor outside. 'Listen,' I said. 'I'll take you out there — as soon as the Enquiry is over.'

He shook his head, still walking towards the freedom of the main doors. 'It's too late now,' he said.

His attitude exasperated me and I caught hold of his arm, checking him. 'Don't you understand? I'm offering you my boat,' I said. 'Sea Witch is lying in Lulworth Cove. We could be over there in twenty-four hours.'

He rounded on me then. 'I tell you it's too late.' He almost snarled the words at me. And then his eyes slid past me, narrowing suddenly and blazing with anger. I felt his muscles tense, and then he had freed himself from me and was walking away. I turned to find Higgins standing there. He had Yules with him and they were both staring after Patch walking down the corridor, fascinated by the thought that he might be guilty of sending a lot of men to their death.

I turned to look for Hal, but Higgins caught hold of my arm, so that I was instantly conscious of the colossal brute strength of the man. 'I 'card wot you said just then.' His throaty voice was full of the smell of stale beer as he thrust his head close to mine. 'If you think you're goin' ter take 'im a't there…' He checked himself quickly, his small, blood-veined eyes narrowed, and he let go of my arm. 'Wot I mean is… well, you steer clear of 'im,' he rasped. 'E's a wrong 'un — yer can take my word fer it. You'll only get yerself inter trouble.' And he turned quickly and went ploughing off down the corridor, little Yules hurrying after him.

A moment later Hal joined me. His face was serious. 'I've been talking to Lionel Falcett,' he said, as we moved off towards the entrance. 'It's as I thought. They think he's hiding something.'

'Who — Patch?' I was still shaken by what Higgins had said, wondering if he'd guessed that I'd been referring to the Mary Deare.

'Yes. It's only an impression, mind you. Lionel didn't say anything, but…' He hesitated. 'Do you know where Patch is staying?' And when I nodded, he said, 'Well, if you're absolutely certain of the chap, I'd get hold of him and tell him what the form is. It's the truth and the whole truth now, if he wants to keep clear of trouble. That's my advice, anyway. Get hold of him tonight.'

We went into the pub across the road and had a drink. I phoned Patch from there. It was a lodging house down by the docks and the landlady told me that he'd come in, got his coat and gone out again. I phoned him later when we arrived at Bosham and once after dinner, but he still hadn't returned. It worried me and, going to bed early, I found it difficult to sleep. Rain was lashing at the window and in the twilight of half-consciousness Patch and Higgins wandered through my mind. I pictured Patch walking the streets of Southampton, walking endlessly to a decision that would justify his cry that my offer was too late and leave him just something to be identified in a mortuary.

In the morning, of course, it all seemed different. The sun was shining and there was a blackbird singing, and as we drove into Southampton, the world was going about its prosaic, everyday life — delivery vans and postmen on bicycles and kids going to school. It was ten-fifteen when we reached the court. We had arrived early so that I could have a word with Patch before the Investigation was resumed. But he hadn't arrived yet. Only a few of the witnesses were there, Higgins among them, his big body slewed round in his seat, watching the entrance.

Across the court several of the lawyers had come in and were standing together in a little knot, talking in low voices. The Press desk was filling up; the public gallery, too. Hal left me and went to his seat, and I moved out into the corridor and stood there, watching the people filing slowly in, searching for Patch amongst the faces that thronged the narrow passage-way.

'Mr Sands.' A hand touched my arm, and I turned to find Janet Taggart standing beside me, her eyes unnaturally large in the pallor of her face. 'Where is he? I can't find him.'

'Who?'

'Mr Patch. He's not in the courtroom. Do you know where he is, please?'

'No.'

She hesitated, unsure of herself. 'I'm terribly worried,' she murmured.

I stared at her, wondering how it was she had come to share my own fears. 'You should have thought of that before,' I said brutally and watched the muscles of her face contract so that the features looked small and pinched. She was different now from the sunny-smiling kid of the photograph, and the light wasn't shining on her hair any more. She looked grown up, a woman. 'He'll be here in a moment,' I said more gently, trying to calm her fears, and my own.

'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, of course.' She stood there, hesitating, her face taut. 'I went to see him last night. I didn't understand — not until I read the evidence of Higgins and the others.' She stared at me, her eyes big and scared-looking. 'He told me everything then. He was so—' She stopped there with a little shrug, uncertain of herself and what she was saying. 'You do think he's all right, don't you?' And then, because I didn't answer, she said, 'Oh God! I could kill myself for the things I said.' But she wasn't speaking to me. She was speaking to herself.

I heard the court rise. The corridor was empty. There was still no sign of Patch. 'We'd better go in,' I said gently.

She nodded, not saying anything more, and we went into the courtroom together and took our seats. Holland was on his feet. He had a piece of paper in his hand and he turned to face Bowen-Lodge as silence descended on the room. 'Mr Learned Chairman. I have just received information from the Receiver of Wreck to the effect that the Mary Deare is not sunk. The Harbour Master at St Helier, Jersey Island, has reported that the vessel lies stranded on the Plateau des Minquiers and that a French salvage company is endeavouring to refloat her.'

The gasp of surprise that greeted this news swept through the courtroom, gathering force as people gave voice to their astonishment. Men in the Press desk were on their feet. I caught sight of Higgins, sitting with a dazed look on his face. There was still no sign of Patch.

Bowen-Lodge leaned forward over his desk. 'This alters the situation entirely, Mr Holland. I take it that it means that the Receiver of Wreck will be able to make a full examination of the wreck?' And when Holland nodded, he added, 'I presume you have discussed it with him. How long before he can report to the Court?'

'He's not sure about that,' Holland answered. 'He doesn't yet know the exact position of the Mary Deare on the reefs nor has he any information as to the identity of the salvage company. He is making enquiries. But he informs me that the legal position may be complicated — the Minkies being part of the Channel Islands and the company concerned being French. It is a question of the Crown's rights and the rights of the salvage company. He also stated that the tides in this area, which rise and fall by over thirty feet, made the reefs particularly dangerous and, as far as the cargo was concerned, any examination might have to wait on the successful refloating of the vessel.'

'I see. Thank you, Mr Holland.' Bowen-Lodge nodded and turned to his assessors. He conferred with them, heads close together, whilst the sound of people talking broke like a wave again over the court. The Press desk was empty now. 'Well, that's that,' Hal whispered to me. 'He'll adjourn the Court now.' And then he said, 'Did you know she wasn't sunk?' And when I nodded, he said, 'Good God man! You must be daft.'

Bowen-Lodge had separated from his assessors now and he tapped with his gavel to silence the court. 'There are one or two questions, Mr Holland, arising out of the discovery that the ship is not sunk. Please recall your last witness.'

Holland nodded and called, 'Gideon Patch.'

The court was still, nobody moved.

'Gideon Patch!' And when he still didn't appear, Holland turned to the usher on the door and said, 'Call Gideon Patch.' The name was repeated, echoing in the emptiness of the corridors outside. But still nothing happened. Necks craned in the public gallery; the buzz of conversation rose again.

They waited several minutes for him, and the silence in the court was' so absolute that you could almost hear the ticking of the clock. And then, after a brief discussion with the assessors, Bowen-Lodge adjourned the court for one hour. 'At twelve o'clock please, gentlemen.' The court stood and then everybody was talking at once, and down by the jury box Higgins, Yules and Burrows stood in a little bunch with their heads close together. And then Higgins broke away from them suddenly and came lumbering towards the door. His eyes met mine for a second, and they had the dead, flat look of a man who is scared.

The wait seemed a long one. There was no news. All we could learn was that enquiries were being made at Patch's lodgings. 'A fat lot of good that will do,' was Hal's comment. 'A warrant and the police is the only thing now.' We had nothing to say to each other as we waited. He had accepted Patch's guilt as proved. Others took the same view. Scraps of comment came to me from the waiting crowd. 'Wot I say is, he's no better than a murderer… You can always tell, old boy. It's the eyes that give them away every time… And what about Dellimare and that poor Captain Taggart?… 'Course 'e did. Wouldn't you do a bunk if you'd killed 'alf the crew…' And all the time I was trying to reconcile the sort of man they thought he was with the man I had known on the Mary Dears.

At length the crowd began to drift back into the courtroom. As they did so a rumour ran from mouth to mouth — Patch hadn't been seen since the previous evening. Bowen-Lodge and the assessors entered and there was silence as Holland rose to say that he regretted he was not able to produce his chief witness.

'Have the police been requested to take action?' Bowen-Lodge asked.

'Yes. A search has been instituted.' There was a moment's silence as Bowen-Lodge fiddled with the papers on his desk.

'Would you care to re-examine any of the witnesses?' Holland asked.

Bowen-Lodge hesitated. He was looking over the available witnesses and for a moment I thought his cold, searching gaze was fixed on me. Finally he leaned over in conference with his assessors. I felt the shirt sticking to my body. What the hell was I going to say if he recalled me? How was I going to explain my failure to tell them the ship was on the Minkies?

The minute I was kept in suspense seemed a long time. And then Bowen-Lodge said, 'I don't think there is any point in recalling any of the witnesses now, Mr Holland.' He looked up at the court. 'In view of the fact that the Mary Deare has been located, the assessors and I are agreed that no further purpose can be served by continuing this Investigation, particularly as the chief witness is no longer available. I am, therefore, adjourning the Court indefinitely pending examination of the wreck. All witnesses are released. You will be notified in due course should further evidence be required of you. Thank you, gentlemen, for your attendance.'

It was over, the Chairman and assessors gone, the courtroom emptying. As I made my way towards the door, Higgins stepped forward, blocking my path. 'Where is 'e?' he demanded. 'Where's 'e gone?'

I stared at him, wondering why he should be so worked up over Patch's disappearance. He ought to have been pleased. 'What's it got to do with you?' I asked him.

Beady eyes searched my face, peering at me over sagging pouches. 'So you do know, eh? I said you would.'

'As it happens,' I said, 'I don't know. I wish I did.'

To hell with that!' The violence inside him bubbled to the surface. 'You think I don't know what yer up to — you with your boat lyin' in Lulworth, waitin' for 'im. Well, I tell yer, if that's yer game, wotch a't, that's all.' He stared at me, his small eyes narrowed, and then he turned abruptly and left us.

As we walked down the corridor, Hal said, 'You're not going to be a fool and try and slip him out of the country, are you?' He was looking at me, his face serious, a little worried.

'No,' I said. 'I don't think it ever occurred to him that that was a way out.'

He nodded, but I don't think he was convinced. He would have pressed the point further, but as we went out into the sunshine, he was greeted by a man in a reefer with a little pointed beard and greying hair. He had a high, rather strident voice, and, as I waited, I heard him say to Hal, 'Oh, not your type, Colonel — definitely not.' There was something about a motor boat, and then: '… rang up about an hour and a half ago. They had her on charter a month back… Yes, old Griselda. You remember. Dry rot in the keel and rolls like a bastard.' He went off with a high-pitched laugh and Hal rejoined me. Apparently the man was a yacht broker down at Bosham. 'Odd place, this, for him to do business,' Hal said. And then he added, 'I wonder if it's the Dellimare Company, chartering a boat to go out and see what the French salvage people are up to. I wouldn't be surprised.'

We started to walk to the car and he went on talking, giving me some advice about not leaving it too late. But I was thinking of Higgins. Why had Patch's disappearance scared him?

'John. You're not listening.'

'No. I'm sorry.'

'Well, that's not surprising. Nobody listens to advice.' We had reached the car. 'But if it comes to a criminal case, see that you give them the full story, just as it happened. Don't leave it to be dragged out of you in cross-examination. They'll play hell with you and you may find yourself in real trouble.'

'All right,' I said.

We drove down to the police station then to see if there was any news of Patch. But all the sergeant at the desk could tell us was that he had been seen in a number of pubs in the dock area and had spent part of the night at an all-night cafe out on the Ports mouth road. He had got a lift about four in the morning in a truck headed back towards Southampton. They were now trying to trace the truck driver.

We hung around for a little, but there was no further news. 'And it's my opinion,' the sergeant added darkly, 'that there won't be any — 'cept for the finding of the body as you might say. The people at the cafe described him as desperate — looked like death, the report says.'

Hal drove me to the railway station then, and when he had gone I bought an evening paper. Without thinking I found myself looking at the forecast. Winds moderate, north-westerly. As I stood waiting for my train I was thinking of Higgins and the Dellimare Company and the fact that the Minkies were only a day's sail from Lulworth.