A Burial at Sea

CHAPTER TEN

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

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

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

A first puzzle.

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

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

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

He broadened his search, moving in concentric circles around the entire quarterdeck and looking for anything out of place or unusual. But his efforts went unrewarded: besides the crack in the wood of the deck and the coin-shaped object, nothing out of the ordinary presented itself to his (keen, he hoped) eye.

He went downstairs, following the surgeon and the officers by some fifteen minutes.

They were all stood around Halifax’s body, which was on a table roughly waist-high. In a dim corner of the long, low-ceilinged room Tradescant’s sole patient slumbered on. There was plenty of light around the cadaver, however.

Tradescant had a bucket of water and a sponge and was very carefully sluicing Halifax’s wounds, then drying them with a cloth. When he saw Lenox he plucked something from the table and held it up: several blue threads.

“From the wounds around his heart. No doubt from his nightshirt.”

“Have you found anything else?”

“Not yet. We were correct in our surmise that the … surgery on Lieutenant Halifax’s body came after his death, whose cause was this flurry of stabs to the heart.” Tradescant pointed to an area cleansed now of blood but still brutal-looking. “At the moment I’m only trying to wash him.”

Lenox approached the table. Martin and Billings were some feet off, staring impassively on; Billings had a handkerchief over his nose.

“I wonder if all of his organs are intact,” the detective said.

“Sir?”

“Or if an organ might be missing altogether—liver, spleen, stomach.”

Tradescant peered into the body. “That will take a moment or two. Why do you ask?”

“The peculiar nature of these cuts to his torso—that they’re not random or angry, like the initial stab wounds, but surgical. It makes me wonder if the murderer had some specific aim.”

“I see.”

“Such a method isn’t unknown. Burke and Hare were surgeons in Edinburgh, though they preferred smothering, which is why we call it burking now. Then there was the American killer Ranet in 1851, working around Chicago. He extracted the livers of his victims.”

“Why?”

“He was a cannibal, I’m afraid.”

Billings, already looking pale, rushed out of the room.

Tradescant nodded. “I’ll do a thorough examination of the abdominal region, then,” he said.

“The heart is still there?”

“Yes—that I can say with certainty. For the rest, give me a moment.”

Lenox found that he liked Tradescant; the man was admirably calm despite his advancing age, steady-handed, and frank.

“In that case, Captain, perhaps we might have a word?” said Lenox.

“I was just about to suggest the same. First I must attend to the ship, however, since Halifax cannot. Come on deck with me if you like.”

It was past five in the morning now, and the vast black sky had begun to show the pale blue light, at first almost like lavender against the black of night, that comes at dawn. Martin, with creditable energy, ran briskly up to the poop deck, gave several orders there, and then dismissed Carrow, ordering him to send up the next watch before he went to sleep.

“And get this quarterdeck swabbed and holystoned,” he added, then disappeared below deck, holding up a finger to Lenox to tell him to wait.

New men arrived on deck as the exhausted men of the middle watch strung up their hammocks in between the cannons on the gun deck and fell asleep. Soon these awakened sailors were cleaning: the broad slap of the swabs, mixed with hot water, diluting and then vanishing Halifax’s blood. Groggy at first, they exchanged quiet words about what might have happened, and then, rumor quickening, spurred on by the strange state of the sails, the level of the chatter rose. A midshipman Lenox hadn’t seen, quite old, told them to keep it down, but still it was only five minutes before everyone on deck understood, somehow, that it was Halifax who had been wounded. Leaning against the rail of the quarterdeck Lenox listened to theories fly; it was a duel, it was a fistfight, it was a pistol shot from a French ship. He was pleased in a glum way to hear the men speak affectionately of the dead lieutenant.

At last Martin came back on deck.

“Apologies,” he said. “I was having a word with Billings. We’re going to have all the men on deck in the forenoon and identify whatever fiend did this to Halifax. Unless you object?”

“No. In fact I think it’s wise—such social pressure often brings someone feeling guilt to confess. Though I wonder whether someone capable of this sort of murder feels much compunction.”

“What are your initial impressions of the matter, Mr. Lenox? I don’t know how long we can sail with this over our heads. The men already know.”

“I heard.”

“Well?” said Martin. “Give me some good news, would you?”

“I haven’t drawn any conclusions, unfortunately. There are clues however.”

“Yes?”

“Firstly, let us discuss how the body might have reached the quarterdeck. There are three ways that I can see.”

“What are they?”

“First, that the murder was carried out there.”

“Unlikely,” said Martin.

“Why?”

“Noise, for a start. Everyone would have heard an argument or, more likely still, a fight.”

“True. And even if he had been taken by surprise, Halifax would have shouted before the knife struck him, I imagine—the stabbing came from the front, not from behind. Would the quarterdeck have been empty?”

“For short periods, but even in the dead of night someone or other is generally there every few minutes, one of the midshipmen or lieutenants on duty who circulates through the ship.”

“Just as I thought—after all, the body was discovered almost instantly. We’ll count that as possible, but not probable.”

“Yes,” said Martin. Because of his premature gray hair it was easy to mark him as old or weary, but there had been a steeliness in him all night that showed why he had a ship full of sailors who had chosen to stay on with him. He was responsible, resourceful, energetic: a good captain.

“The second option is that someone killed him below deck and brought him up. It would have been insanely chancy, of course. And then, where to kill him? I suppose an officer’s cabin—perhaps even Halifax’s cabin, which I would like to inspect soon—but I doubt that too.”

“What is the third option?”

Lenox sighed and looked up among the masts. “Was there a crack—a splinter—in one of the boards on the quarterdeck, before we left Plymouth?”

“Certainly not.”

“Are there men aloft—among the riggings and those platforms I see at intervals going up each mast—during the middle watch?”

“Rarely. At war or near land perhaps someone in the crow’s nest. But visibility is nil.”

“And might a man go up there at that time without being seen?”

“Very easily. But can you mean—”

“Yes. I think Halifax was lured up this back mast—”

“That one, Mr. Lenox? From fore to aft the three masts are called the foremast, the mainmast, and the mizzenmast. You are pointing in the direction of the mizzenmast.”

“That platform halfway up—you see it?”

“Yes.”

“I would bet any fellow in Piccadilly that Halifax met his killer there, under some pretense, and died there too.”

“Their voices would have carried, surely.”

“Not if the murderer stressed the need for secrecy and quiet. A knife can appear very quickly in someone’s hand, and the stabbing may have been so violent because the murderer wanted to silence Halifax immediately. Hence the contrast with the later cuts…”

“But you mean to say, then, Mr. Lenox, that in this hypothetical scenario a man carried Halifax, a large gentleman, halfway down the mizzenmast and onto the quarterdeck, without being spied?”

“No. I think he was murdered there, and then tossed down onto the quarterdeck. It would be a straight fall down, and from there the murderer could have done his work deliberately and thrown the body down when he saw, from above, that those on deck weren’t looking. The weight of Halifax’s body falling from such a height cracked a board beneath his body.”

“Jesus. Like a sack of flour.”

“That’s the loud thump Carrow reported, I daresay, which compelled him to go down to the quarterdeck in the first place.”