Anatomy of Murder

PROLOGUE

Thursday, 3 May 1781, sixth year of the American Rebellion; third year of the Franco-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce

HMS Splendor of the North American Fleet, under command of Captain James Westerman, off the coast of Newfoundland

SIX BELLS OF THE MORNING WATCH (7 A.M.)

Captain Westerman was in his cabin reading the letter from his wife for the fourth time when he heard the officer of the morning watch ring Six Bells. At the last double clang the door opened and his servant, Heathcote, came in with the coffee. Westerman did not need to go on deck to know they were having a good run on a fine day. The creaking of the planks and sound of the water hissing at the stern told him that. The air of happy expectation in the ship had curled into her timbers; even the bell sounded tuneful.

Heathcote tried, none too subtly, to read over James’s shoulder as he delivered the coffee. James twitched the papers to his chest.

“Any news from home, Captain?”

“Yes, Heathcote. Your wife has run off with the innkeeper and my wife is forced to cook her own dinner.”

His servant drew his brows together and pursed his lips.

“Always thought yourself amusing, haven’t you, sir? Mrs. Heathcote might have the sense to run from me, but she’d never leave Caveley or Mrs. Westerman, so there’s no good funning.”

James took his coffee and drank. “Fairly said, Heathcote. Your wife is well and comfortable, as is mine. Harriet says the new Lord Thornleigh has returned to London with his sister and guardian-oh, and the baby uncle-while the rebuilding works at the Hall are carried on. Also, the squire has sent them a ham.”

“Is it recent news, sir?”

“No-two months old.”

“Well, you do keep running about, sir. Makes it hard to keep track of you.”

James smiled. Other than his first lieutenant, his current officers on the Splendor were a relatively young lot, so inclined to be respectful of their captain. Heathcote, however, had sailed with him for years, and had got in the habit of treating Westerman like a slightly wayward nephew.

The Splendor, a neat frigate of forty-four guns, had been hailed the previous night by the sloop Athena. The latter had been dodging American and French sails for a week to reach them, bringing letters from home and orders from the fleet. The letters were very welcome, and the orders to join and help protect a convoy of merchant ships bound for England equally so. The crew of the Splendor had not thought they’d have a chance to kiss their wives for another year, but the merchant fleet was valuable and Admiral Rodney wanted good men to guard it, so had ordered James and his men back to England.

However, it was the tidbit from the Athena’s captain that had caused the general state of excitement. His crew had spotted what seemed to be a French frigate the previous day sitting low in the water and apparently alone, heading up the coast. The Athena’s captain had recognized, he regretfully informed Westerman over dinner, that the French ship outgunned him, but reckoned the more heavily armed Splendor could take her.

The crew was desperate for a decent prize. By the time they had arrived in the Leeward Isles early the previous year, the place had been picked clean by the admirals, and though James and his crew had taken some merchantmen and privateers, these had not been sufficient to make their fortunes. If they managed to take a frigate with her holds bulging with powder and ordnance for American rebels, every able seaman would receive enough gold to go home a respectable man, and James would be able to buy another estate if he had the mind. It felt as if the ship herself were straining at the leash to reach it.

Heathcote normally left James alone to drink his coffee in the morning, yet today he was slow to leave the cabin. James looked up at his servant’s long face therefore with his eyebrows raised.

The man reached into his pocket and produced a pamphlet. Even before he could read the title, James sighed.

“Who had that then, Heathcote?”

“One of the young gentlemen, sir. His mother enclosed it with her own letter. I caught him showing it to the other boys and boxed his ears for reading trash.”

“Thank you.” James picked it up. A rather unpleasant woodcut on the front of the pamphlet depicted a man’s body lying prone on a patch of grass. Beside him, a woman stood in a bad actor’s stance of horror. There was a castle in the background. The woman looked nothing like Harriet, and Thornleigh Hall, unlike this castle, was an elegant residence fitting for an ancient and wealthy family, but without a turret in sight. The title claimed that the pamphlet was a complete, accurate and astonishing account of the late terrible murders in Sussex and London and the investigations of Mrs. Harriet Westerman and Mr. Gabriel Crowther. James flicked through it and curled his lip.

“What nonsense this is! Half stolen out of the Advertiser, and half the perverted imaginings of the writer.” He held it up and tapped the female figure on the front. “Does this look like my wife to you, Heathcote?”

Heathcote considered. “Looks more like the master gunner in a dress, sir.”

James did not laugh. A career in the Navy was as much about politics as prizes, and it did him no good to have a wife that drew such attentions to herself. He loved Harriet unashamedly, but such things were, at best, awkward.

There was a knock at the door and one of the youngsters, a bright lad of about fourteen and James’s favorite among the midshipmen, put his head in, his face shining with excitement. “Mr. Cooper’s compliments, sir, but he thought you might like to know we’ve spotted a sail.”

“Did he, indeed, Mr. Meredith?” James replied, downing the last of his coffee and clambering into the coat Heathcote was already holding out for him. “Tell him I shall join him directly.”

Mr. Cooper found his captain beside him on the quarterdeck in moments, already twisting his telescope open as he spoke.

“Good morning, Lieutenant.”

“Good morning, sir. Fine on the starboard bow and a fair way off still, sir.”

James lifted his glass and pointed it where Cooper had indicated. There it was, a little smudge of sail on the horizon. This could indeed be a piece of luck. If they had had no sight of the potential prize today or tomorrow, James would have been forced to abandon the chase to meet the convoy, but there she was, as early as could be expected.

Mr. Mansel, the major in the command of the ship’s company of marines, joined them. He had been up in the rigging straining for a better view.

“Lord, I hope she’s a fat one,” he said. “The Americans and those damned French have seemed to know where we are more often than the Admiralty, and keep sneaking round our backs like rats. I met a fella in Kingston says every ship has a soothsayer on it who kills chickens and reads where our ships are in their guts.”

James ignored him. “Very good, Mr. Cooper,” he said, slowly lowering his glass again. “Feed the men, then beat to quarters and clear the decks for action, please.”

Mr. Cooper began to give his orders, Mr. Mansel went to tend to his marines, and James rested his hand on the gunwale, a vague smile on his lips. It was possible the ship they were chasing was one of their own, or a prize already taken, but James felt a familiar stirring in his blood. He was sure this was a Frenchman and a prize-her course, her position, the report of the Athena’s captain all suggested it. The Splendor herself seemed to agree; she was surging toward that tiny speck between the gray sea, and the gray skies, gaining steadily. The midshipmen noticed the glitter in their captain’s blue eyes and punched each other’s shoulders as they scrambled down the rigging.

TWO BELLS OF THE AFTERNOON WATCH (1 P.M.)

The mood of excitement had changed to one of wariness. The Splendor was ready and warlike. The panels had been stripped from James’s cabin, the hammocks rolled up and strung along the bulwarks to stop splinters, and the guns run out with a thunderous roar. Now everything was still again. The surgeon’s station was set up in the cockpit on the lower decks, and he and his mate sat in silence, saws, tourniquets and bandages lying neatly beside them. Ready.

Behind each of the cannons its crew waited, powder, shot and sand buckets standing by. Mr. Meredith stood behind the hulking iron back of the eighteen-pounder under his command on the top deck, trying not to watch the captain on the quarterdeck out of the corner of his eye. It had seemed at first that the ship in front of them would try to outrun them. When it became clear she could not, her pace had slackened considerably. An hour ago it had become possible to read the name on her side-the Marquis de La Fayette; it was also possible to see her flags. A British flag flew above the French, the sign that the ship had already been taken as a prize by some other, luckier, crew.

Another of the midshipmen, Hobbes, commanding a neighboring gun, leaned over to Meredith and hissed, “Doesn’t smell right. What would a taken prize be doing on this course?”

Meredith did not respond but kept looking at the Marquis as she grew large in their vision. Her gun doors were closed. A figure became visible on the stern, a tall thickset man in shirtsleeves. He watched them approach, then when they were close enough to draw his portrait, the man suddenly shrugged on his coat and shouted something.

“French!” Meredith bawled, and threw himself to the deck as the black mouths of two cannons emerged at the stern of the Marquis and belched smoke.

He heard the shot tear into the rigging and looked up to see the fore-topsail yard smashed and then the shouts of the captain as wood and rope clattered to the deck around him.

“Fire bow chasers! Wear away, Mr. Mackensie. Master Gunner, ready port guns and fire as they bear!”

The Splendor’s forward guns gave a great cough and spat fire. Her gun crews cheered; one had caught the Marquis’s stern and left a ragged hole in her. Meredith balled his fists and scrambled to his feet. The French ship had made all sail and was trying to run for it again, but Captain Westerman was having none of that. Even without the fore-topsail, the Splendor still had pace enough. Already there were men up in the yards splicing cut ropes.

The ships were horribly close. The marines in the Splendor’s rigging were firing down onto the decks of the French ship and doing horrible slaughter, but the Marquis had her own men armed with muskets. When Meredith heard a shout and horrible thwack behind him, he glanced over his shoulder to see the major of the marines on his back on the deck behind him, groaning, a red wound blossoming on his thigh. The master’s wife got her arms around him and began dragging him back toward the hatch to the lower decks and the surgeon, leaving a thick red trail behind them.

Spinning back around, Meredith saw the flanks of the Marquis just coming into sight; her guns were run out now. He could see men moving behind them, distorted mirrors of his own crew. The Splendor began to rake the stern quarter of the Marquis. The guns on all three decks thundered as one, hitting her low and hard.

Meredith waited for his moment, then gave his order. His gunner touched fire to the cannon and the beast roared, throwing herself back on the ropes. Scrambling forward, Meredith peered over the bulwark. Their shot had been as accurate as the guns forward of them. Three of the gun ports on the Marquis’s starboard side had been torn into one great hole. Meredith could see one of the French lying in the opening screaming, his leg crushed and half torn away. Only the stern chasers of the Marquis could do them real damage here. The roar and whistle of ordnance passed above him. There was a scream and another man fell from the tops. His body never hit the deck, but was rather swung in the festoon of half-cut rigging like a child in a giant’s cradle.

“They must yield!” shouted Hobbes. “We’ve shot her to hell!”

Meredith found he was murmuring prayers between gritted teeth, his hands trembling. Then came a yell of victory from the bow. The Marquis had struck her colors. It was done. Unclenching his fists, the young man began to stand, the heat of the battle replaced by a flow of relief. The men around him were doing the same. The marines began to sling their muskets over their shoulders and descend from the ropes; Hobbes was all but dancing and his gun crew was smiling at him like proud parents.

Then the Frenchman let fly her sails, suddenly slowing her to allow her guns to bear on the Splendor. The broadside struck them hard and Meredith stumbled and felt the ship shudder under the impact. He looked to see Hobbes, his mouth wide and tears in his eyes.

“But she struck her colors! She surrendered! Dear God, how can they?”

Meredith felt an anger slick up his throat like a sickness.

“Reload, you bastards!” he yelled, his voice breaking with rage. His men were already on it, their faces as dark and bloody as his own. A ball from the cannon on the top deck of the Marquis burst through the bulwark no more than four feet from him, sending a blast of splinters up around it like a firework. Meredith clutched his leg and closed his fingers around a little dagger of wood. He pulled it out, hissing between his teeth. The cannonball spun crazily across the deck before tumbling out of a port on the starboard side. It was like a child’s marble game. Meredith laughed. James Westerman, his face white, was striding up the deck and clapped his shoulder as he passed.

The Splendor would not permit the French to get behind her but let the wind spill from her sails till she was once again in the rear. The Marquis let her stern-chasers fire at them on the upward roll of the sea, trying again to savage their rigging. Meredith looked up, but could hardly tell what damage had been done, the rigging was so wreathed in gunsmoke from the marines’ muskets. All around him, the balls flew with a sharp crack. The mood was vicious.

The Splendor’s forward guns gave another great bark and there was a cheer as the English crew saw that the Marquis was hulled at the waterline; the sea was pouring in. Meredith could see men in the hole, nails in their mouths and batons in their hands, trying to keep out the ocean. “Drown, you bastards,” he murmured. He could feel tears on his own cheeks. He dared not think what damage the broadside had done on the lower decks, but would swear it was the smoke from the guns.

“Prepare to board!” The Splendor began to inch back alongside the Marquis.

Meredith watched in horrid fascination as a French gunner put a slowmatch to his cannon. The world disappeared in smoke for a moment and Meredith heard the air spilled with a scream. Hobbes had been caught and thrown to his knees on the deck. His arm was shattered and already his blood was making the boards under Meredith’s feet slippery and treacherous. “Get below, Hobbes!” he yelled, and the boy began to drag himself toward the hatch with his good arm. Then: “Fire!”

The Splendor’s broadside at this distance was devastating. Metal ripped through the French ship like a holy fire. Meredith aimed for the base of the Frenchman’s main mast. There was a thunderous crack and it fell toward them, catching on the Splendor’s spars and holding the two ships together in a bloody embrace-yet still the French did not cease firing.

The captain was striding back down the length of his ship, his face set and his sword already in his hand. Behind him, men were lifting pikes from their racks under the mainmast, and the little boys who fetched the powder from the magazine were pressing fresh cartridges into the hands of the marines. Meredith felt for his sword.

“Boarding party!” he roared, and his men dropped their business at the gun and ran for pikes of their own. As he swung his legs over the bulwark, preparing to leap onto the deck of the Frenchman, below him he could see others of the crew clambering from their portholes over their dead and their guns to swing themselves into the Marquis through the gaping holes torn in her sides. Meredith leaped and caught onto the Frenchman and hauled himself up. A light wind touched his cheek and in front of him the smoke parted enough for him to see a couple of French officers in fierce argument even as the English surged toward them across their bloody, shattered decks. He looked behind him and noticed a marine, his musket loaded and raised back on the Splendor.

“There!” he shouted, pointing at the two men with his sword. The marine nodded and Meredith dropped to the deck as the musket fizzed and cracked behind him, his arms over his head and his whole body trembling. One of the officers fell, the other at once dropped to his knees and began to fumble under the corpse’s coat, pulling his sword free with such force the body rolled on its back, gaping up sightlessly at the fallen mast.

The officer remained kneeling and lifted his captain’s sword above his head, shouting as loudly as he could above the yells and gunshots: “On se rend! On se rend!”

Captain Westerman emerged from amidst the smoke: “Cease firing!”

The English cheered and the gunfire came raggedly to a halt. Meredith lifted himself to his feet and looked around him. Dotted about the decks, his fellows from the Splendor stood over their French captives looking bloody and wild. The captain looked more ferocious than Meredith had ever seen him; his sword was red and wet.

The living officer remained on his knees, still offering up the sword. Westerman grabbed it from him, spun on his heel and smashed the flat of the blade against the fallen trunk of the mainmast. The blade flew away from the hilt and skittered on the deck.

The French officer flinched.

“Rendez vos armes!” Westerman shouted, and as the pikes, guns and knives of the remaining French crew clattered to the deck, he threw down the hilt of the captain’s sword by his corpse and turned back toward the Splendor.

EIGHT BELLS OF THE AFTERNOON WATCH (4 P.M.)

James’s cabin was restored to order while he visited the surgeon and sick bay to find out what men he had lost. When he finally returned to his cabin, there was already more coffee on his table, his wife’s letter had been returned to the place where he had left it and his first lieutenant was waiting for him.

“How bad is it, Captain?” Mr. Cooper asked.

“Forty dead. One of the young gentlemen, Hobbes, has lost an arm, but he took the operation bravely and will live. Major Mansel is dead.”

Around them, the ship echoed with the sound of hammering and the shouts of the carpenter. Mr. Cooper shifted on his boots and put his hands together behind his back. His captain’s mouth was set in a thin line. He was like a being formed from the ship’s mind. The rage each member of the crew felt at the false surrender soaked through the timbers and into James Westerman’s flesh.

Cooper cleared his throat. “I’ve been talking to the officer-the one who gave up his captain’s sword.” James looked up sharply and Cooper wet his lips before continuing. “His English is as good as mine. They had a run-in with one of ours a week ago, but managed to get away. Half the crew was in the sick bay being treated for their wounds before we came near them. Good thing too, or that broadside would have ripped us to shreds. They wanted their captain to find a safe harbor for repairs, but he insisted on pressing on. I think they were near enough shooting him themselves.”

James sighed and passed a hand over his forehead. “Any notion as to why he wouldn’t stop?”

Cooper straightened, but continued in a firmer voice, “She’s stuffed with supplies for the rebels, including a vast amount of powder. It’s a miracle she didn’t blow, given the pounding she received at our hands, so you have made us all rich if we can get her into home waters.”

“What says our carpenter to that?”

“That we can make her sail, though he’d like to tan Meredith for taking out the mainmast.”

“Good. You’ll command her, Cooper. Pick your crew as soon as repairs are sufficient to make us both seaworthy.”

“Thank you, sir. But there’s something else. It seems their captain had a guest-a civilian, Frenchman-and the officer reckoned it was on his account that their captain made them fight so hard.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. He told them the passenger could not fall into English hands.”

James frowned. “Is he alive?”

“He is, though he has a nasty splinter wound in the belly. Seems he owes his life to Meredith. When the French captain was shot, he had just given his lieutenant the order to cut the man’s throat.”

James began to put his coat on once more. “Where is he?”

“Just being brought over to our surgeon now, sir. Theirs is dead, so our boys are seeing what they can do for the prisoners. What will you do, sir?”

James looked at him, his expression hard. “There are too many men dead, Cooper. That Frenchman is not going to die without telling me what he knows.”

The surgeon was sent away from his post to rest an hour, and Heathcote placed to give the captain and his guest some privacy. Heathcote never looked around, though he heard the sounds and could think what they meant. For a moment in the midst of all the French talk spoke low behind him, the captain’s voice harsh and strong, the man from the other ship whispering and gurgling, he thought he heard a thin voice singing. Then there was another rattling gasp, a whimper like a dog struck, and the sounds ceased.

THURSDAY, 15 NOVEMBER 1781, HIGHGATE, NORTH LONDON

Mrs. Harriet Westerman was watching her hands. They were shaking slightly. The door to the parlor opened suddenly and she looked up. The owner of the house had entered the room; he started on seeing her then said softly in his light Scots voice, “My apologies, Mrs. Westerman. I had thought you still with your husband. Is everything as it should be?”

Harriet tried to smile at him, but found she could not and looked back at her hands, which trembled still on the stiff purple silk of her skirts like nervous children forced to recite in front of the dining-room draperies. She did not know why she had let herself be persuaded into buying this dress. It was uncomfortable and James had never liked this color.

“My visit this evening was not particularly successful, Dr. Trevelyan,” she said. She heard him take up a chair, positioning it close to her with the sort of sigh that precedes bad news calmly spoken, and she added in a rush, “Please do not take away my hope, sir.” Even in her own ear her voice sounded rather desperate.

The doctor caught his breath and waited a moment before speaking.

“There is always hope, madam,” he said finally. He stood again and moved across to the fireplace, picking up the poker to stir the logs a little. The flames chattered and shrugged; there was a pale-colored thread hanging loose from the high collar of his bottle-green coat. “Your husband’s mind is struggling to repair itself. His injury was grave. Because you see his limbs are whole, you expect him to be himself. Do not. He is changed.” Trevelyan turned back toward her, frowning. “Madam, you push him too much. Your love and energy in your care of him are commendable, but you cannot will him into health.”

A wave of frustration knitted her fingers together and made her joints whiten. As the wife of a naval commander in time of war she had feared shot, the vicious killing splinters of wood that flew deadly from the impact of a cannonball, fierce winds and high seas. She had met widows enough, or women whose husbands returned to them with a sleeve pinned up, or swinging on crutches, but she never thought to fear something like this, this invisible maiming. “It was such a stupid accident.”

“A blow to the head that left him unconscious two weeks, madam.” Trevelyan ceased frowning at her and said more gently, “But, my dear Mrs. Westerman, let me give you hope-I will not take it away. I believe parts of his memory are returning. I believe he will, in the coming months, better learn to govern his emotions and behave more fittingly toward his family, but you must allow time to do its work. He has improved since he arrived here, and he will continue to do so.”

She was silent a few moments.

“You said when we first met, sir, there was a man in your hometown who recovered from a similar injury. .”

Trevelyan turned away from her again and let his eyes rest on the painting of a stag at bay that decorated the wall over his mantelpiece. The beast was injured, but its great pronged horns were still lowered, ready to joust with the dogs that had cornered it, its sides torn and bleeding. The morbid little scene was surrounded by a landscape of purple heather that was beautiful and felt nothing. “I did,” he said, as his eyes traveled over those distant hills. “John Clifford lived with his family again and earned his bread. But he was changed. Commander Westerman will never again be the man you married, madam. You must both find the courage to accept that.”

Harriet bit her lip and listened to the fire before speaking in a small and rather helpless voice. “What must I do?”

“Do not come here-” he raised his hand as she started to protest. “No, madam, I speak in all seriousness. Promise me you will not visit here for a few days, and when you do, bring your son.”

Harriet thought of her little boy, his face pale and afraid, his terrible confusion. “Stephen has become frightened of his father.”

Trevelyan nodded slowly. “Perhaps a little. But he has not seen the captain in some time. Stay away for only a few days, madam. The captain will certainly miss you and make efforts to manage himself better when you return, and greater efforts still in the presence of your son.”

Harriet managed to unclasp her hands. “Perhaps if I no longer tried to force him to recall events. .”

“A few days, Mrs. Westerman. Occupy yourself in other ways.”