A Burial at Sea

CHAPTER ELEVEN

If nothing else, Martin was decisive. He ran straight up to the quarterdeck to look at the crack in the board that had been underneath Halifax’s body.

“You,” he called out to the midshipman who was sitting on the rail, looking out at the water, “go and fetch me Mr. Carrow and Midshipman Lenox. They were the only two officers on duty during the middle watch, I believe?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then go. I see you hesitating—yes, you have permission to wake Carrow up. Lenox it goes without saying.”

The boy ran off downstairs.

Martin went over to the plank—the whole deck was now innocent of blood, though Halifax’s body had lain there scarcely an hour before—and looked at the crack.

“New?” Lenox asked.

“Unquestionably. You need only look at the wood.”

“Quite so.”

Martin stood up. “Where is that blasted Carrow?” he said, though there had barely been time for the midshipman to get below deck. “Well—no matter—up we go, Mr. Lenox.”

“Both of us?”

“It’s no climb at all—thirty feet—children do it. Old Joe Coffey goes to the crow’s nest for his cup of grog every evening, and he must be seventy.”

Lenox was in fair physical condition—he often took his scull out on the Thames to row—but suddenly doubted whether he could make it up the taut, unyielding rigging without falling and smacking his head. On land it would have been a simple task, but the pitch and roll of the ship made everything unsteady.

Still, the tale of Old Joe Coffey (whom Lenox suddenly rather despised as a show-off) goaded him on. “You first, then,” he said.

“Remember you’re on my ship, Mr. Lenox.” A hint of a smile came into Martin’s face. “You mustn’t give me orders.”

“Of course. Shall I go first?”

“No, no.” He paused. “I’ve just thought—it’s a damn good sight I’ve left the sails slack—otherwise the platform would have been trampled on no end as the men set sail, and the whole area might have been contaminated.”

Martin leaped onto the rigging, shouting a man out of the way, and began to climb like a monkey. Lenox followed—much more slowly, not at all like a monkey, in fact, unless it was some tremulous old monkey who had never been much for climbing anyway. At first the rigging felt solid enough, but as he got higher the small waves that smacked the ship began to vibrate in the ropes. Halfway up he made the mistake of looking down and concluded the fall would probably kill him, not least because of the uneven surfaces below.

(Was it possible the fall had killed Halifax, and that the wounds—some of them, all of them—were postmortem? But why? No, it was a silly thought.)

Eventually, with much deliberation and care, he reached the perch where Martin had now been for some time. The captain’s face made clear what he had found. After Lenox had pulled himself through the hole he steadied himself, then looked down.

There was blood spattered across the low railing and a great slick swath of it, drying into a darker color, at their feet.

“This is our spot, then,” said Martin. He didn’t speak for a moment. “Look at this blood. Halifax—he was the most placid of men. Of officers in this service. I can’t conceive of anyone wanting to kill him.”

“My question is how it was done.”

“Isn’t that plain enough?”

“I suppose—only this area is barely big enough for the two of us to stand. Wouldn’t a fight spill one or the other over?”

“Maybe it spilled Halifax over.”

“No, because he had been very precisely prepared before he fell to the quarterdeck, I believe. The real question is whether the man who killed Halifax has any marks on him.”

“We shall see when all the men are piped up to the main deck for inspection.”

Lenox shook his head. “I still wonder whether he would have gotten out of bed for a common sailor … met them here … I suppose there are circumstances under which it might have been possible.”

“A false name, for instance—saying that I or one of the lieutenants wanted to see him there, perhaps a midshipman,” said Martin, “but I think it exceedingly doubtful.”

“Or perhaps one of the sailors provoked him into coming there, with a threat or a piece of gossip. Mutiny, say.”

Martin’s face went deadly serious. “No, sir,” he said.

“I don’t mean that it would have been true. A ruse.”

Still, the captain didn’t seem to like it. “Well.”

“Listen—while we have a moment to ourselves—do you know what this might be?”

Lenox pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and unfolded it, stained red but dry. The object he had found, coin-shaped and -sized, lay in the middle.

“A large coin, I would have said. A crown?”

“No, look closer.” He rubbed some more blood off of it, though it was still hard to make out the writing on it. “I’ll need to wash it, but for the moment…”

“It’s a medal, isn’t it?”

“I thought so too. Can you identify it?”

Martin picked it up and turned it over twice, looking much more painstakingly now. “Maybe, once you soak it and the lettering comes clean. It’s naval, I can say that much. Silver. An officer’s medal.”

“Possibly Halifax’s?”

“Possibly.”

“But he wouldn’t have carried a medal with him to such an assignation, would he have?”

“No, I highly doubt it. It would have been in a box, the sort you keep for cuff links, and worn with his best uniform.”

“Ceremonial occasions, then. Not pinned to his nightshirt.”

“Never.”

Lenox thought for a moment and then sighed. “I suppose we had better go look at his cabin. If I weren’t out of practice I would have done it before. Now someone may have been in it already. Stupid.”

“Let’s hurry, then.”

Going down the rigging was considerably easier than going up, so easy that Lenox was fooled into false confidence and nearly slipped a quarter of the way down before he caught himself. On deck Martin barked an order at someone to clean the perch straightaway.

Carrow and Teddy Lenox were waiting for them on the main deck.

“Sir?” said Carrow.

“Mr. Lenox,” said Martin, “would you go to Halifax’s cabin or hear their story?”

Lenox sighed. “We must hear their story while it is fresh in their minds,” he said. “Perhaps a sentry could be posted—”

“Very well, it shall be done. Come down to the wardroom,” said the captain to Carrow and Teddy. “We’ll speak there.”

In the wardroom Carrow told their story. Teddy Lenox, looking in uniform perhaps more suited to his new role, stood by silently. They had both been on the poop deck when they heard a thump. After a moment or two Carrow, curious to see if perhaps a bird had smacked into the ship or some piece of equipment had fallen, went down and discovered Halifax’s body.

“Did you see it?” Martin asked Teddy.

“Yes, sir.”

“You went down after Carrow?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then he dismissed you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lenox badly wanted a word with his nephew, but knew this wasn’t the moment to have it.

“Did you see anyone in the rigging of the mizzenmast at around the same time?” he asked.

“No, sir,” said Carrow. “It was dark, of course, and beyond that you wouldn’t expect anyone to be up skylarking in the middle watch, barring, I don’t know, a squall or some enemy action.”

“Quite right,” said Martin.

“How many men would have been on deck during your watch, Lieutenant?” asked Lenox.

“A few more than twenty.”

“Where would they have congregated?”

“Sir?”

“Are they at work the whole while?”

“Oh—no, sir. Unless they have orders they would be on the main deck, or perhaps up at the fore of the ship, sitting along the bowsprit.”

“At the other end of the ship from the quarterdeck, in other words.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see. Another question, if you don’t mind—which of the men on this ship are capable of violence, in your opinion?” he asked both the young lieutenant and Martin.

“Difficult to say,” Martin answered. “In the right circumstance, all of them.”

McEwan chose this moment to lumber through the door with a biscuit in his hand. He retreated to his hallway, bowing as he left, when he saw that the room was occupied.

“Except him, perhaps,” said Martin. “But of course the men will all fight. Carrow? You deal with the sailors more from day to day.”

“There are a few bad tempers, sir.”

Lenox shook his head. “No—a planned meeting, the surgical nature of Halifax’s wounds—I don’t think this was a moment of bad temper, but rather one of planned and executed malice. Still, Mr. Carrow, if you would put a list together of men you don’t trust, it would be useful.”

Carrow looked unhappy, but nodded when he saw in Martin’s face a stern confirmation of this request. “They’re good men, sir,” he added, as if to formally express his unhappiness with the request.

“One of them is not,” Lenox said. “Now, would one of you show me Lieutenant Halifax’s cabin? Then we shall see how Mr. Tradescant has progressed. With your permission, of course, Captain.”