A Burial at Sea

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

As Lenox walked toward the quarterdeck that afternoon he looked at the faces of the sailors. Though it had been so short a time he felt he could read them already, having seen them sunken in dark suspicion after Halifax’s death, then, after that stale mood dissipated under the pressure of the storm, in good spirits. Now they were closed, guarded. He had no doubt whatsoever that the great majority of them were loyal to Martin, and puzzled by the incident (which he was, apparently, the last to hear of). But many of their faces seemed to say: The captain is a fine gentleman; the officers too; I have no quarrel with them; but I will hear why a man does before I judge him. They wouldn’t condemn a whisper of mutiny until they knew what lay behind it.

It made Lenox feel even more ill at ease than the murder had, in a way. If the worst came would he be strung up? Set adrift in a rowboat with five days’ provisions and a map? And what about Teddy?

It didn’t help when Evers, McEwan’s friend, the one who thought Lenox was an albatross, passed him without even touching his cap, an angry blank on his face.

Still, as the orders flew back and forth across the maindeck and the Lucy bore steadily onwards there was absolutely no outright dissent, and some of the sailors seemed to say their “Yes, sirs!” a bit louder than they had before, as if picking a side. Perhaps all those years afloat together would keep the ship going.

There was another reason that the idea of mutiny bothered him: it reopened the possibility, all but dismissed in his mind, that someone from among the great multitude of common sailors aboard had killed Halifax. Lenox had felt persuaded that it must be someone of the wardroom who had done it, someone with the power to demand a meeting with Halifax in the middle of the night, someone who could have stolen Carrow’s medallion and then stolen it again from Lenox’s cabin without fear of being observed as far out of place in the wardroom. And then Halifax had been well loved among his men. But what if all that counted for nothing, and it was some madman from below deck who had killed Halifax and now was trying to mount a mutiny?

With a despairing sigh Lenox turned toward the step that led to the main deck. To his surprise—for the man hadn’t been there before—he met the ship’s redheaded engineer, Quirke.

“How do you do, Mr. Lenox? Taking the air?”

“Yes, and trying to think.”

“Please, carry on—I hope I shan’t be in your way.”

“On the contrary, I wonder if we might have a word.”

Quirke nodded. “I thought you might want to speak with me about Halifax.”

“I do. Have you any notions of your own?”

“Only that it’s a terrible business. Halifax was a good fellow.”

“I was just considering in my mind whether it was a sailor who killed him or an officer.”

Quirke frowned. “I can scarcely allow in my mind the possibility that it was an officer.”

“I confess that I would have expected more grief from his fellow officers.”

“Ah, yes. Well, we are at sea—we take death less hard here, I suppose, than they do on land. On a long voyage it’s not uncommon to lose several men.”

“Not by murder, though.”

“No, of course not. But the officers are also private, insular. I doubt they will have expressed their anxieties or their grief to you.”

“I see. What were you doing when he was killed?”

“I was dead asleep—excuse me, what a poor phrasing. I was fast asleep, I should say. My man can attest to that. He sleeps directly outside of my cabin. It’s unlucky that Halifax’s steward strings his hammock below deck, away from the wardroom.”

This was a point that Lenox hadn’t considered. Several members of the wardroom had stewards, like McEwan, whom they would have had to pass to leave their cabins. Except for the man already on deck: Carrow.

Then again, it was possible that each of these stewards was more loyal to his own master than to the ship or to Halifax.

“Who else besides Halifax has a steward who sleeps away from the wardroom?”

Quirke narrowed his eyes, thinking. At last he said, “Only Lee, I think. I know that you, Mitchell, Billings, Carrow, Tradescant, Pettegree, the chaplain, and I all have servants who sling up outside our doors. Neither Lee’s cabin nor Halifax’s has the room for it, I believe.”

“Tell me, Mr. Quirke—did you hear of the mutiny?”

“Shh … not that word. I did, as it happens. I would never have guessed it for the Lucy.”

“Do you know which officers were on duty during the changeover?”

“Mr. Billings would have been just leaving off, and Mr. Mitchell coming on. Why?”

“Would the captain have been on deck?”

“No—or rather, I wouldn’t have thought so. May I ask why?”

“I wonder if this shot—this rolled shot—was directed at one of them.”

Quirke’s eyes widened. “Do you think they’re being targeted by the brute who killed Halifax?”

“It’s not impossible. We don’t know if Halifax had warning.”

“Certainly not any warning of that sort.”

“I confess myself puzzled,” said Lenox, and in his heart he knew it to be true. He was grasping at straws. He wondered if he might, in his old form, have done better with the facts before him. “At any rate, thank you for your help.”

“Of course. If I can do anything further…”

Both Mitchell and Billings were on deck now, assisting the captain as he gave order after order to adjust the sails, almost as if he wished he might outsail all of the Lucy’s present misfortunes. They were moving along at a brisk pace, and neither man was happy to be interrupted by Lenox. Still, both listened to him.

Billings went pale. “You think I might have been a target, you’re saying? The shot wasn’t rolled anywhere near toward where I was standing!”

“If it’s simply a message, that wouldn’t matter a great deal.”

“Why would they bother sending a message? They didn’t send one to Halifax.”

“Not that we know of, you’re correct. But who knows what might happen in a deranged mind? At any rate it’s only a suggestion. Keep your eyes peeled.”

Billings nodded. “I will. Thank you.”

Mitchell’s reaction was less gracious, and his dark complexion brightened red. “Why on earth would it have been directed at me!” he half shouted.

“I don’t say that it was, only that—”

“I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, Mr. Lenox. Thank you.”

He turned away, back toward a group of men awaiting orders.

Lenox decided that he might as well speak to the purser, now that he had spoken to Quirke. Pettegree was in a very small study near the fore of the ship, hunched over a supply list. As Lenox’s first impression had suggested, the purser had a slightly embittered air, pinched, ungracious, to go along with a businesslike deportment. It might have been a life spent balancing debits and credits, or it might have been something no speculation could reveal—from childhood, say, or adolescence. Lenox noted it.

“May I ask where you were when Halifax died?” he said after greeting Pettegree.

“Asleep.”

“It’s inconvenient that everyone was asleep at the time.”

“In particular for Lieutenant Halifax, I would have thought.”

Lenox grimaced. “Yes, of course. Now, confidentially … is there anyone in the wardroom you believe capable of violence?”

“All of them—they’re men of the navy, after all. Each one of them, however gentle he might seem, has killed a pirate or an Indian.”

“Nobody in particular, however.”

Pettegree shrugged. “The code of the navy would suggest I hold my tongue, but since you ask—since there is a murderer loose aboard this ship—I would say that I have seen a great temper in two of the men.”

“Who?”

“Mitchell and the captain. For the rest, they are calm enough men.”

“The captain has a temper?”

“Oh, yes—a formidable one. But that may be in the usual course of these things, a condition of his position.”

“Do you have a temper?”

“No, and what’s more I didn’t kill Halifax. If I had wanted to I couldn’t have done it face-to-face. I’m not a large man.”

Almost jokingly, Lenox said, “But the element of surprise—”

Pettegree shook his head. “The point is academic.”

“To be sure. And Lieutenant Carrow?”

“He seems to be bearing up under some internal pressure, from time to time—but I have never seen an example of his violence, so I cannot add him to my list, no.”

“Tell me, what does your instinct say? Who did it?”

An expansive sigh. “I’ve been going it over in my mind, in fact. If I had to say I would point to the sailors. They’re a brutal species of man, I promise you. They have their own code, their own way of living. They’re no closer to civility than the orangutans of Gibraltar, I sometimes think.”

It was the opposite of what he had wished to hear, but some truth rang in the statement nonetheless. “Yes. I see. Incidentally, nothing peculiar has happened with regard to the ship’s stores?”

Pettegree frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Has anything gone missing? Been stolen? Might Halifax have discovered a theft?”

“I don’t think so. The storm washed out a certain percentage of our dry goods, as storms will. Otherwise the stores are intact.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m planning to check again in the morning—shall I tell you what I find?”

“I would take it most kindly,” said Lenox.

“Very well. If there’s nothing further, then—”

“No. Have a good afternoon.”

“And you.”