Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities

Chapter VII

After naming himself to the rabbit-faced clerk outside Sir George's inner door, Hoare sought out an out-of-the-way corner in which he could lean without being bothered while he awaited the Admiral's pleasure and, himself unobserved, could observe his fellow officers. He suspected he would have a long, long wait.

Except for a few who, like himself, were present on other business, the gathering outside Sir George's sanctum consisted of eleven hopeful lieutenants, candidates pursuing the two choice spots in the virgin Vantage. Each bore his precious, irreplaceable letters of testimonial, some visibly a decade or more old. Each had dressed in his finest and stood as trim as he could; each glared at any rival who came eye to eye. Among them Hoare counted three weary old trots, older than he by ten years or more, and two downy-cheeked youngsters with rows of shiny new buttons on their uniform lapels and cuffs. The other six were run-of-the-mill serving officers, somewhat scarred but, unlike himself, still serviceable at sea. Of the eleven, three were already flushed with drink.

One of these procured a chamber pot from a nearby cabinet and walked toward Hoare's corner, unbuttoning himself as he came.

"Kindly find another pissing place, sir," Hoare said in his harshest whisper. "I do not care to be splashed."

The other started and paused as if deciding whether to take umbrage. Upon taking stock of Hoare's dire aspect, he mumbled an apology and went off in search of a less controversial corner.

Only three candidates for Vantage remained when the rabbit-clerk answered a bellowed summons from within, entered the Admiral's sanctum, and returned, looking flustered.

"Lieutenant… ah… Hoare? Has Mr… a gentleman by that name presented himself?"

Hoare overlooked the expected titters and wove his way through the thinning crowd to the rabbit. "I gave you my name over two hours ago," he said.

"Oh, dear. And now Sir George is most displeased. Oh, dear." The rabbit's ears seemed to droop. It hastened to open the door and squeak out Hoare's name.

It might have been early July, but Sir George was frosty. He was wearing his own hair, almost as frosty as the half-wig he had sported at his reception. As was natural, the three others in the room had caught their Admiral's chill. They were a post captain with the single epaulet carried to starboard that signified less than three years' seniority, a languid elegant in a uniform coat like Hoare's own, and a slim, pallid civilian. These must be Captain Kent of Vantage and Sir George's flag lieutenant and his secretary, respectively. Hoare felt himself under four pairs of icy eyes.

"If you will excuse me for a moment, gentlemen…," Sir George began, and then, as his companions began to rise, added, "No, no. Please, simply bear with me for a trice, while I deal with this officer.

"Now, sir, you have damned well taken your time in obeying orders. You have kept me waiting, not only for one morning, but for two entire days. This is hardly the behavior of a dedicated officer of the Navy. What do you mean by it, sir?"

"I was afloat until this morning, sir," Hoare whispered, "on personal leave, to recover my voice."

"You evidently require additional leave, then," the captain began, and drew to himself some of the Admiral's chill.

"Mr. Hoare's affairs are none of yours, sir," said Sir George.

The captain reddened and subsided.

"And this morning's delay?"

"I presented myself in your anteroom more than two hours ago, sir, within an hour of tieing up."

"Hmmph. Then we'll set your dilatory behavior to one side for the time being. Now, as to the purpose for which I requested your immediate presence two days ago…" Sir George's qualified absolution notwithstanding, he was not going to forget whatever inconvenience Hoare's absence had caused him.

The Admiral began to leaf through the papers lying before him, but the secretary was quicker off the mark. "The papers you were looking for, Sir George," he announced smugly.

"Damme, Patterson, you're bold indeed to decide for me what I am looking for. D'ye think me a wittol?" Sir George took the packet sharply from his aide's hand.

"Here, Mr. Hoare," Sir George said. "You will have been told that the man Kingsley was found shot this morning."

Hoare nodded.

"It is obvious that Kingsley's murder was intended to stop his tongue. Since the story of his adultery with his own captain's wife was already out and the cuckolded man is dead in any case, that can hardly have been the motive for his murder. He must have been privy to some other, greater secret… something which justified silencing him so effectively."

"The question, Mr. Hoare, is: what? And whose secret was it? Perhaps these papers offer the answer. I know of nothing else that can. They were aboard him when he was taken. Some of 'em belonged to Hay himself. Some, which I have turned over to his successor, relate to Vantage's business. Here are the rest of them."

The Admiral interrupted himself. "I don't believe I have yet made you gentlemen known to each other," he said as Hoare tucked the packet under his arm.

"This officer, Kent, is Mr. Bartholomew Hoare of my staff-more or less, when he is pleased to feel like appearing. Hoare, John Kent, now captain of Vantage."

"Servant, sir," Hoare said.

Captain Kent acknowledged Hoare's stiff bow with a curt nod. He would be unwise indeed to seek a berth in Vantage, Hoare decided.

"As I said, Hoare, Kingsley was obviously shot by no accident, but by someone who feared what he might say at his court-martial. I want you to find out who, and what he wanted hushed up.

"To begin with, you are to read, learn, and inwardly digest these papers and give me your opinion of them. Patterson here says some of them look personal to the dead man-and damning. He says that others are in some kind of cipher.

"Take as much time as you need with this, Hoare, but take it somewhere else. Report to me here, at eight bells of the afternoon watch."

In the dim, stuffy match-boarding cranny at the Victualling Office, which he used as an occasional workplace, Hoare had installed a splintered table to serve him as a desk. The place was awkward and uncomfortable, but it was nearby. Here, instead of in the outer of his own two sunny rooms at the Swallowed Anchor, he spread out the papers Admiral Hardcastle had given him.

Some of them would have been part of the missing file that he remembered Captain Hay's clerk, Watt, describing to him some days ago. Mr. Watt had said of this one, for example, that "the writing appeared to be that of a young woman, self-taught, perhaps." Reading it, Hoare could imagine her bent over the paper, tongue pressed between her teeth in concentration as she wrote. The letter hinted to the captain that his wife was not only betraying him but doing so with his own second officer. It could have been written by Mrs. Hay's maid Maud, since the woman had been found in Kingsley's company.

A week ago, Hoare mused, he would have regarded this letter as priceless evidence of Kingsley s motive for murdering someone-Maud, if not Captain Hay. But now, with Kings-ley lying murdered himself, it was of historical interest only. Hoare could see no reason for handing it to Captain Hay's widow. Her past sins were no business of his.

The letter that had caused Mr. Watt's crise de conscience lay among the others, with its enclosure pinned to it. As Mr. Watt had remembered, it read: "I found this in his uniform pocket that night. I know the sort of thing it is, and I do not believe he should be in possession of such a thing. But perhaps you gave it to him in connection with Vantage."

Mr. Watt had not recited the rest of the letter to Hoare and Gladden. On reading it, Hoare placed a note at the head of his mental memorandum file: Question Mrs. Hay.

The enclosure was written in minute block letters on the thinnest of tissue. It had apparently been tightly rolled for sending, instead of being folded. There was no trace of a seal. It was addressed to "Ahab" and signed "Jehu." Its text comprised several score five-letter words of gibberish.

It was obvious to Hoare, as it had been to Watt, that this was an enciphered message. Knowing nothing of codes and ciphers, he had to set it aside.

Hoare leafed quickly through the other letters in the file Kingsley had stolen from Vantages cabin. They were, as Watt had implied, irrelevant and trivial. Most were from tradesmen, although two solicited places for their sons as midshipmen in Vantage and one was a plea for funds from an imprisoned debtor signing himself "your devoted cousin, Jeremiah Hay." He turned now to Kingsley's other papers.

Here were three heated, tousled missives in Mrs. Hay's careless script. Why had Kingsley been such a fool as to keep them? Had he, too, had blackmail in mind?

Kingsley s most interesting documents were four messages. Their appearance was identical to the enclosure that had caught Mr. Watt's eye.

The fourth letter was also in a semiliterate hand:

Estem'd Sir: if you dont wan er usbin [husband] an the LAW to no about them things you bin doin wat no ENGLISH Genelman shd be doin youl bring 20 pouns to the ol plaic [place] sadiday at for bels. COM ALON!!!! I stil got frens an you dont no mor yr umbl obt servt

J-Jaggery

In this letter, at least, the threat of blackmail was specific. But since Kingsley was no longer alive to be blackmailed, Hoare felt he could as well set it aside-except that the name Jaggery tickled his memory in connection with something unsavory.

He remembered now. Some years ago, a gunner of that name had suffered two broken legs and a mangled left hand in a sea accident. Since a full set of working limbs was as essential to a gunner as a carrying voice was to a deck officer, the lame gunner, like Hoare, had been put ashore. There, interest of some mysterious lower-deck kind had found him a place at the Ordnance Board.

Janus Jaggery had first come to Hoare's attention as one of a ring of petty diverters who generally had odd pieces of nautical gear at hand for the right price. Although Hoare's inquiry had lifted several light-fingered men out of their secure nests ashore and sent them to sea or to Botany Bay, Jaggery had managed to keep his place. Perhaps Hoare would call on him, after all, at the Bunch of Grapes, once he had finished his survey of Kingsley's papers and made his report to Sir George.

This time, as soon as the Admiral's rabbit caught sight of Hoare he hastened to announce Hoare to his master. The rabbit informed him that Captain Kent had made his selections and disappeared aboard his new command.

Within Sir George's sanctum, Patterson the secretary still hovered at the back of his Admiral.

"I shall be brief, sir," Hoare whispered. "Two letters represent two separate attempts at extortion. The first is the maid Maud's weak approach to Captain Hay, while the other is a more sinister approach to Kingsley by one Janus Jaggery.

"Since both targets are dead, the abortive bits of blackmail have become moot, and I would recommend they be disregarded were it not that the man Jaggery is known to me as a questionable character at best. I would like to make sure of his continued good behavior.

"I also want to interview Mrs. Hay. One of her letters to the late captain gives me reason to suspect that he was not unaware of her liaison with Kingsley."

Go on.

"The papers in cipher are beyond my competence to handle, sir. However, if you wish to investigate them further, as I think advisable

…" Hoare paused and cleared his throat painfully.

Sir George gestured to his secretary. "Wine, Patterson. The man's dry."

"… as I think advisable," Hoare repeated when he had wet his whistle, "and yet do not want to refer the documents to their Lordships' people in London, I know of two persons in the area, either one of whom might be of assistance."

Hoare had stressed the word might with all the power he could put behind his pitiful whisper, thereby losing all the ground he had made with the wine's help. He had to gesture for more. He must, he thought, find some way of carrying a mild anodyne about so that he could better endure extended talk. Perhaps Mrs. Graves's physician spouse would help. Perhaps he would see her redoubtable little person again.

"Whom d'ye have in mind?" the Admiral demanded. "I don't care to have ciphered messages swanning about my command, out of control. And the thing would be lost to mankind within seconds of arriving in Whitehall."

"One, sir, is Watt, captain's clerk in Vantage. The other is Mrs. Simon Graves, wife of a physician in Weymouth. Both are talented in matters of handwriting."

"I can hardly issue orders to a doctor's wife in Portsmouth," the Admiral said. "Perhaps you yourself can find a way of consulting the good woman. Take whatever steps you deem necessary-within reason, of course. As to Watt, I shall second him to you out of Vantage, if you'd like, until you've used him up or until she sails, whichever is sooner."

"I would find that most helpful, sir." Kent, Vantage's new captain, would damn Hoare blue if he knew him responsible for stealing his clerk just as his frigate was making ready for sea. Well, Hoare thought, damn him blue, right back.

"See to it, Patterson," Sir George said. "Have the man Watt report himself to Hoare at his lodgings, prepared to remain there at the Navy's expense until Hoare's through with him or until Vantage's anchor is aweigh. When will you have that cipher sorted out, then, Hoare?"

"I can't say yet, sir," Hoare whispered, and regretted his words instantly.

"'Can't say,' sir? What kind of an answer is that to give your superior officer, sir? I've had mids kiss the gunner's daughter for less. Someone should have beaten that sort of insolence out of you, sir, before you were handed your commission.

"You've been on the beach too long, sir. You've got fat and lazy, sir, fat and lazy. You've waxed fat and kicked against the pricks. It's past time you were sent to sea."

Hoare's heart leaped. If he could only take Sir George at his word …

"I would be overjoyed, sir," he ventured.

Mr. Patterson gasped. For ten heartbeats that seemed to Hoare like as many minutes, Sir George Hardcastle glowered at Hoare from under his heavy brow. The paneled room was silent.

At last, the Admiral's expression became almost sympathetic. Evidently, Sir George shared Hoare's longing to be at sea again.

"I take your meaning, Mr. Hoare," he said. "Perhaps I shall be your Eurystheus and you my Heracles." He paused again as if to assure himself that Hoare understood the allusion.

Hoare did. The gods had sentenced Heracles to undertake certain labors given him by King Eurystheus of Mycenae as penance for killing his own children by the king's daughter, Megara.

"And Patterson here can be my Talthybius," the Admiral added.

The secretary looked sour. Talthybius had been Eurystheus s herald, by whom the king had sent his orders to Heracles. The hero had dubbed him "the Dung Man."

"If you seek your own Argo, Mr. Hoare, make sure your good works are such as to magnify you before Their Lordships. Return Watt to Vantage when you have used him, if he has not already rejoined her under sailing orders. That will be all, sir."

"Aye aye, sir," Hoare whispered. He made his bow and removed himself.

Mr. Watt reported to Hoare's quarters in the Swallowed Anchor as instructed.

"Captain Kent was not in the least pleased to learn that I was to be taken away from Vantage at such a crucial time, sir," the man said. "I do not think it wise to repeat his very words. Even he, however, must obey Sir George's explicit instructions."

"I understand, Mr. Watt. Let us do our best to return you to his care as soon as possible," Hoare whispered. "Now, sir, as I recall from our discussion aboard Vantage, you are a student of handwriting. Is that really so?"

"I have come to believe, sir," Watt said, "that a person's handwriting reveals not only his gender-or hers, of course- and position in life, but also his character and personality. In fact, I occasionally entertain my friends by describing a person's nature, based on inspecting samples of his handwriting."

"Interesting," Hoare commented. He handed the clerk the folder. "Tell me what you think of these, then."

"This, as you must know already, sir," Watt said, "is the folder that went adrift from Captain Hay's desk. Certain official correspondence was missing and still is-"

"Sir George has sent it back aboard Vantage," Hoare said, "where I am sure you will find it when you return. Go on."

"The remaining correspondence is as I remember it. A letter from the late captain's lady, several from tradesmen, one written-as I think I remember telling you-by a lower-class woman. She is literate but has had little practice in the calligraphic art. It might be the prelude to a demand for money."

"I agree. Thank you. Now, these," Hoare said, handing Watt the other documents found on Kingsley.

"Oh, dear me," Watt replied upon casting his eyes over Mrs. Hay's steaming letters to her husband's lieutenant. "Oh," he said again as he read. "Oh, my. Oh, dear." He set the letters on Hoare's desk, his lips pressed firmly together and his sallow face pink. "The letters of a lewd woman and a hot one, indeed, sir. One can only be happy that Captain Hay never saw them." He picked up the letter from J. Jaggery. "This is a piece of outright blackmail, of course," he said. "Again, the writer- a man, this time, probably a seaman, sir, or at least a man of the sea-is barely literate. He places a low value indeed on his silence, does he not? And in mentioning the law, does he perhaps advert to some untoward action on the late lieutenant's part, other than the plowing of his master's field?" He looked at Hoare inquiringly.

"One could indeed draw that inference," Hoare whispered.

When he took up the thin pieces of tissue, Watt's eyes brightened. He drew a glass from his bosom and bent over the papers, his pointed nose almost scraping along their surfaces as he studied them.

"Hmm. Not the Caesar cipher," he muttered to himself. "No vowels at all. Probably substituted numerals. Wonder why? A substitution cipher, indeed. Must count frequencies…"

He reached out blindly for a piece of blank paper, found a silver pencil in his coat, and began taking notes to his own dictation. For now, he had moved to another world. Hoare did not want to bring him back from it. He scribbled a message that told Watt that he was to sleep at the Swallowed Anchor that night and tiptoed out of the room.

On his way to Jaggery's lair, he decided to make a detour, view the body of Peregrine Kingsley, late second lieutenant in Vantage, and question the newly widowed Katerina Hay.

Hoare was pleased to find that the corpse had yet to be released to the man's relatives-whoever they were. The attendant made no trouble but promptly pointed Kingsley out from among Portsmouth's other recent naval casualties.

"Ball went into the head, like you can see, sir," the man said. "Stopped there, though. Surgeon took 'er out."

Gladden had been mistaken in this detail, then. This was evident to Hoare from the coarse trephining work that had completed the destruction of the late licentious lieutenant's beauty.

"Where's the bullet?" Hoare asked.

In answer, the attendant rummaged about in a drawer underneath the cadaver. " 'Ere," he said at last, handing it to Hoare.

"I'll want this," Hoare whispered.

The bullet, he saw, bore small slightly canted ridges. It was a rifle bullet, then. If so, it could have been fired from a considerable distance. Furthermore, the killing had been done at night. Thus, he thought, the murderer had to have been no mean marksman.

"You'll 'ave to give me a paper, then," the attendant said.

Hoare sighed but wrote two notes, one to himself, identifying the bullet as being what it was, and one to the attendant. Each signed one note. Pocketing his grisly prize, Hoare tipped the man sixpence and went his way.

Captain Hay's relict had not yet moved from the apartment she had shared with her late husband on the second story of the Three Suns Inn. Hoare had seldom patronized the Three Suns; it catered to flag officers and post captains at the top of the list. Even Captain Hay must have been lucky in his prize money, if he could support an extensive stay there.

That the three gilded spheres of the Medici crest that overhung the inn's portal also served to identify pawnbroking establishments apparently troubled the proprietors of the Three Suns not at all. Their establishment was too exalted for any confusion. Hoare would not have been at all surprised to find Sir Thomas Frobisher in residence. It was his sort of place.

The doorkeeper of the Three Suns made it clear that his masters discouraged the presence of officers below the rank of commander except on Admiralty business.

"You will either admit me forthwith and have me announced to Mrs. Hay," Hoare said at last, "or suffer the loss of your protection, be pressed, and go to sea again. You have five seconds in which to make your choice."

He had several impressive-looking, meaningless documents stuffed in his uniform pocket for occasions like this. He drew one of them out and pulled out a silver-cased pencil.

"One. Two…"

The porter fled. "Mrs. Hay will receive you," he said humbly when he reappeared. "This way, please."

Though he had never been introduced, Hoare had seen Mrs. Adam Hay-Katerina Hay-on stage several times. She was a skilled performer, of near-professional quality. Her acting was a trifle florid for Hoare's taste, but she was a favorite among the serving officers. Since she greeted him standing in the middle of the inn's second-best drawing room, Hoare made her his second-best leg.

Katerina Hay was big, blonde and Dutch. As she stood there in tasteful mourning, her opulent lines reminded Hoare of Oranienboom, the two-decker from which he had once fled incontinently. He had been first in Staghound, 36, then, and it was just before the day his voice had been taken from him. She looked just as dangerous.

"Please accept my condolences, ma'am, on your tragic loss," he whispered.

"You need not whisp-oh! Of course. You're Admiral Hardcastle's 'Whispering Ferret!' " Mrs. Hay lost all trace of her formidable mien. As it did on the stage, her accent lent piquancy to her voice. "Sit down, sir, I pray!" With massive grace, she seated herself at one end of a chaise longue and gestured for him to take his place beside her. "Thank you for your good wishes, Mr. Hoare. But let us come to the point, for you must be a busy man with this inquiry of yours." She smiled at him knowingly. "Oh, yes. After your success with Amazon, it would be obvious-no? — for dear Sir George to direct you onto the murder of my husband."

Taken full aback, Hoare could only laugh.

Katerina Hay laughed back. "Did anyone ever tell you, sir? Your laugh sounds like a will-o'-the-wisp in one of our Zee-land bogs. So. What do you wish to ask me?"

"I believe-forgive me-that your husband was aware of your relationship with the late Lieutenant Peregrine Kingsley."

Katerina Hay laughed again-somewhat scornfully, Hoare thought. "Of course he was 'aware,' sir. Indeed, he more or less approved of it."

Then, if the husband of Kingsley's mistress already knew of the affair, what had been Kingsley's motive in killing him?

"Do not look shocked, Mr. Hoare," Katerina Hay went on. "My husband and I remained fond of each other. But Adam had long since become incapable, and I… I am a full-blooded woman."

Had she moved an inch or two along the chaise?

"Then that explains the reference in this letter to 'he' or 'his.' You knew your husband would know whom you referred to."

"Exactly, Mr. Hoare. My husband may have condoned my placing horns upon him, so long as no open scandal ensued. But he, and I, would have drawn the line at my consorting with a traitor."

"Then it might follow," Hoare said, "that Kingsley killed your husband, not because he feared discovery as your… er…"

"Cicisbeo, Mr. Hoare. Lover."

"Yes… but because of the cipher he allowed you to find."

"Exactly I was foolish myself, perhaps, and must take some of the guilt for poor Adam's death, for I told Peregrine Kingsley what I had done with the message, and gave him his conge on the spot. I was right to do so, nie?"

With this question in her native tongue, Mrs. Hay definitely edged closer.

The bunch of Grapes, where Hoare knew he would either find Jaggery himself or learn of his whereabouts, was a known haunt of men who lived on the wrong side of the law. Yet it was not the filthy, dark lair a stranger would therefore expect. It did not reek of bad gin, used beer, or stale tobacco. It was full of neither drunks nor drabs, and none of the occupants were bedraggled. The small smugglers, illegal tradesmen, master crooked craftsmen, and other well-behaved criminals of Jaggery's sort had better taste than to frequent a den and enough money to support that taste.

So the Bunch of Grapes was a tidy if slightly battered place, well lit and smelling faintly of good ale. The only occupants Hoare could see were several groups of what looked like respectable workingmen and a small party of young sprigs.

The occupants all looked up when they saw an officer enter, then returned to talking-one quartet, quite openly, about last week's raid of the revenue men on a well-traveled smuggler's route. They seemed to think a rival gang had ratted on them.

"They better not start anything with us," one said. "We'll sort 'em out like we did last time."

"Wasn't us as done it," said a tidy man at another table. "Must have been Ackerley's boys stung 'em out."

"They didn't do no such thing," said Jaggery, whom Hoare now sighted in a corner, accompanied by a very small, wan girl child with enormous black eyes that seemed to look him through and through. "I 'appen to know."

The child caught the man's attention with a yank on his sleeve. Upon sight of Hoare, his eyes went wide.

"An' how the 'ell would you know, Mr. Jaggery? It's not your line o' trade," the tidy man commented.

"Softly, softly, friends," said a middle-aged man behind the bar. "There's gentry present." Though he wore a scar across his nose, he also wore a clean green cloth wrapped about his waist and a polite expression on his ruddy face. Jaggery sat back with a resigned look and glanced at his young companion.

"We haven't seen you here for a bit, Mr. Hoare, sir," the scar-nosed man said. "Have you been at sea, then?"

"Not really, Mr. Greenleaf," Hoare whispered. "Just working for His Majesty and taking a bit of a journey now and then, in Serene."

"So. She's Serene these days, sir?"

"Not now. I turned her into Alert as soon as we got into harbor today."

Several of the other guests laughed knowingly, but Jaggery's little companion looked perplexed and dared to speak up. "What's a lert, Da? A neel, like, or a sole?" she asked, to more laughter. She blushed and hung her smooth ash-blonde head.

"I'll buy you a pint," Hoare said to Jaggery, "if you'll introduce me to your friend and give me some news."

Jaggery hesitated, looking for a way out of this, then resigned himself to the broadside to come and looked heavenward.

"For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful," he said. "Two pints, then, Mr. Greenleaf."

"And a glass of Madeira for…?" Hoare added.

"Me dorter Jenny," Jaggery said.

"Just a minute, then."

Greenleaf disappeared through a door behind the bar and returned with a black cobwebbed bottle. He took a corkscrew and bent to open it, holding it between his knees in the old-fashioned way. The cork came out with a soft pop, and the heady tropical fragrance of a superb Madeira replaced the homely scent of ale in the atmosphere of the Bunch of Grapes.

"I'll change my mind," Hoare whispered. "I'll take Madeira, myself. That stuff smells like nectar."

"She orter, Mr. 'Oare," Greenleaf said as he poured the dark wine into two clean, coarse glasses. "She's been layin' there in the dark, in me back room, for nigh onto ten years, with 'er friends an' relations." He poured Jaggery's pint. "There you are, Mr. 'Oare," he said.

Hoare paid him and brought his purchases to the table where the old gunner and his daughter, Jenny, were waiting.

Ordinarily, Hoare would have described Janus Jaggery as an oily faced man as well as a two-faced one. Every time Hoare saw the man he was peering out from under his mop of greasy hair and whining through his gray-brown beard about the pain of his deformed left hand, his warped legs, and the buffets fate was forever dealing him. Here with his daughter, though, he certainly wore the better of his two faces. He now looked sly, but benign. Jenny Jaggery would be five or six years of age, Hoare guessed. In a threadbare frock that would have covered her twice, she was a wisp. But someone other than her father must have the care of her, for she and her frock were clean, though drab.

" 'Ere s to yer good health, Mr. 'Oare."Jaggery took a deep draft of his ale and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

Hoare's first sip of the Madeira told him that, like a fortunate butterfly, he was sipping nectar.

"Is the man really named 'Ore,' Pa?" Jenny asked.

"Mind yer manners, lass," her father said. He tensed visibly where he sat, but seeing that Hoare was not about to knock him down or call his daughter out, eased back again and gulped down a draft. "An' to what do we owe the pleasure of yer presence here with us, Your Honor?" he asked warily.

"The late Peregrine Kingsley. You sent him this." Hoare held out the misspelled letter, keeping it firmly in hand and watching for Jaggery's reaction.

Jaggery read it as Hoare held it before him, moving his lips as he read. Did he seem relieved?

"Aye, Yer Honor. I can't deny it, seein' as it's got me own name on it in me own 'and."

"Tell me what's behind it."

"Saw nothin' wrong with pickin' up a bit o' blunt from the fancy Mr. Kingsley. The cove's captain wouldn't 'a' been 'alf tore up to find 'is wife had been makin' free with 'is lieutenant, would 'e, now?"

"He already knew, Jaggery."

The gunner's jaw dropped.

"And," Hoare said, "you could have gotten yourself spending the rest of your life in Botany Bay for extortion. What would have happened to your wife and young Jenny then?"

"Ain't got no wife. Slicer Kate sliced Meg's gizzard two years ago, and she took sick of it and died. Got 'anged for it, too, Kate did, in Winchester, at 'Ampshire assizes. My Jenny's a norphing, she is.

"Besides," Jaggery went on, "the captain went and died on me, 'e did, the thoughtless bastard. And there ain't no one will bother me now, now that other bastard Kingsley s been put out of the way. So there, Mister Hoare."

No connoisseur, Jenny had tossed off her Madeira in one gulp. Now she giggled, gave a small belch, let her eyelids drop, and fell asleep leaning against her father's shoulder.

"There. Now see what ye've done,"Jaggery said reproachfully. He looked down at the child and laid his maimed hand on her glossy head.

"And what else was Kingsley about, Jaggery, that he should be afraid of the law as well as his lady's husband? And you referred to 'friends' that he had lost and you had kept. What were you and he engaged in together?"

Jaggery shook his head and looked at Hoare out of wide, innocent-looking eyes. "Mr. Kingsley 'ad a way about 'im,

Yer Honor. Much against me will, 'e persuaded me to take on some bits of nautical merchandise, like. Bits of ship chandlery. Scuttles, patent blocks, things like that, that might have gone adrift. Jom York's a good friend of mine. Ye know Mr. York, Yer Honor?"

Since York had found Kingsley's Marine uniform for Hoare, he could hardly deny it, nor, indeed, did he wish to. He nodded. "And Kingsley was no longer 'friends' with Jom York?"

"Never said that, Yer Honor, did I now? Mr. York's an upright man, he is…"

By calling him an "upright man," Jaggery meant, Hoare knew, that York claimed membership in the notorious Thieves' Guild, sworn to mutual confidence and trust. Hoare also knew that even though the outside world might be sure of its existence and its secret power, the Thieves' Guild was a fraud, a figment, and a fairy tale. But if Jaggery thought that he, Hoare, believed in it, let him.

"I'm not satisfied, Jaggery," Hoare said. "You're hiding something. You may be in far more shoal water than you know. Spit it out."

"As Gawd's me witness, Yer Honor, ye know all me sins," the man said. "Yer persecutin' me, and it's not right."

Hoare knew well that Jaggery had more to spill but, without any clue about what it might be, was at a loss as to how to get it out of him. Try as he would, the old boatswain hid and dodged behind a barricade of reproachful words. Hoare was missing the key to his secret fortress.

"Keep your hands off the King's property, man," Hoare said at last. He rose from the table and gave the sleeping Jenny a pat of his own. "And start combing those sly brains of yours about your friend Kingsley and what he might have been up to, beyond having at his captain's wife. I'll have my eye on you, and I never sleep."

He stopped on the way out to haggle with Greenleaf about buying his entire stock of Madeira. Hoare left the Bunch of Grapes the owner of six dozen, having promised payment in full once they should have been delivered to the Swallowed Anchor and he had tested a randomly selected bottle from the consignment.

"It's not that I don't trust you, Mr. Greenleaf," he said, "but who's to say that some land pirate might make a midnight switch?"

Back at the Swallowed Anchor, Hoare found Mr. Watt fast asleep with his face in a copy of one of the enciphered messages to Ahab from Jehu. His candle had guttered out. Hoare picked the little man up in his arms and carried him up to the garret room he had been assigned by Mr. Hackins, the landlord.