There was an uncomfortable pause as this information sunk in, but since there seemed to be no further questions, Lady Yee took back the mantle of hostess and speaker of the house. She confirmed there was nothing else, and asked her guests to allow Dr. Neruda, who had been most patient, to return to his family and his work. All five men immediately concurred, and in turn each thanked the doctor for his cooperation and his candor. In parting, they all heartily, and somewhat self-consciously, wished him good fortune in his new life in America.
Captain Hammond looked over at his wife, and the expression on her face told him at once that she believed she had won her point with a wide margin. She had been totally convinced that once these men had met and talked with Dr. Neruda, any lingering doubts as to his complicity in the death of the unfortunate sailor would melt away. The doctor’s self-deprecating good manners, obvious compassion, and religious devotion to nonviolence all spoke of a man incapable of murder, especially for something as trifling as a few religious insults.
Even though Lady Yee felt sure she had accomplished her primary goal, she now believed it was time to uncork the genie and see where the spirit led. Any trail that focused popular speculation in a direction away from Dr. Neruda and the infirmary was all that was required. And since Lady Yee was certain that the doctor was innocent, she was also convinced there was a trail to be found that led in another, and more promising, direction. To that end, Lady Yee asked her guests’ indulgence while two more people were called to speak. She said that having enjoyed many years at sea on her husband’s ship, she had come to know a few facts that were, in the main, incontrovertible when it came to life at sea. And the most particular of these was that the cabin boy and ship’s cook knew more about what transpired aboard ship when it came to the crew and officers than did the captain or the owners. In that vein, Lady Yee said she had asked both the cabin boy and the ship’s cook to attend this meeting. But first she asked the indulgence of the gentlemen present to be allowed to ask her questions first. They, of course, were free to ask whatever they pleased before the interview was terminated.
When Toyuka entered with the maid, Lady Yee put him at his ease once again by saying he could remain standing if he liked, as they would only keep him a few minutes. The cabin boy seemed content with that, and so Lady Yee continued. She asked him if the dead man, Vuychek, had any enemies among the crew, enemies who would not be displeased to see him dead. The cabin boy laughed and said everybody hated Vuychek. When Lady Yee asked the reason why, Toyuka looked incredulous for a moment, as though the answer was well-known to all. Then he caught the gist of her question and said Vuychek was a bad man, crazy, mean, and he was Malakoff’s spy. He was also a liar and sometimes tried to blackmail other crew members over minor infractions. Lady Yee took this to mean that Malakoff and Vuychek were friends, but the cabin boy soon disabused her of that assumption by saying the captain hated Vuychek worse than the crew did. When Lady Yee asked why, in that case, the captain hadn’t gotten rid of the troublesome deckhand, Toyuka said he did special jobs for the captain when they were in port. He ran secret errands and such. The cabin boy suggested that perhaps Vuychek was too valuable to part with. Toyuka said it was difficult to make sense out of it all, since the crew generally hated Malakoff every bit as much as Vuychek. They were seen as an evil pair of bilge demons, but the ship paid well and fed well, so people kept quiet. Lady Yee asked if there was a basic reason for the bad blood between the captain and Vuychek. Again the cabin boy laughed at the question. He said Malakoff often called Vuychek a thieving two-faced Muslim dog. The captain was overheard to say that at home in Bosnia, such despicable characters would have been taken up and sold to the mines as pit ponies.
Suddenly, with apologies to Lady Yee, Mr. Campion interrupted and said he was given to understand, by the captain himself, that he was a native of Estonia, not Bosnia. Toyuka just shrugged. He said he wouldn’t know one place from the other. He’d never been out of the Pacific trade. Then Mr. Campion, who harbored the greatest distaste for Malakoff, tried to officially confirm a detail that he had only suspected. He asked the cabin boy if Malakoff liked to drink alcohol, and this elicited the loudest laugh of all from the boy. In his broken English, Jojo Toyuka said the captain had a powerful thirst for Polish water (vodka), but he never saw the man really drunk on duty. But he did say the captain always carried a silver flask in his coat, and used it whenever he took one of his pills. Lady Yee took back the floor and asked the boy what kind of pills the captain used, but Toyuka said he didn’t know.
Marshal Sanchez took a turn, showed the dirk to Toyuka, and asked if he knew whom it belonged to. The cabin boy took the knife, looked closely at the base of the grip, and handed it back to the marshal. He said the knife belonged to Vuychek, the dead man. When Marshal Sanchez asked Toyuka how he knew this, the cabin boy said that all crewmen mark their possessions, especially their knives. Vuychek, according to the cabin boy, and seconded by Mr. Atwood, could neither read nor write. He used a simple crescent moon and a star symbol as a signature, the same sign crudely scratched on the base of the dirk’s handle. This news caused a quiet sensation of whispers all around the table. But since there were no further questions, Lady Yee summoned the cabin boy to her side, gave him a five-dollar gold piece for his time, and told him there were more tarts waiting for him in the kitchen. Toyuka thanked Lady Yee and looked at the men seated about the table. When Lady Yee quietly asked what the problem was, the boy asked why they were all so sure Vuychek had been murdered. Toyuka said he’d once known a bosun’s mate who tripped during a bad storm and accidently drove his knife through an artery in his leg. He was dead in eight minutes. Then the cabin boy leaned closer and whispered to Lady Yee behind his hand. He said he didn’t really understand what crazy Vuychek was doing in the engine room, as the chief engineer, Mr. Perez, especially hated him. Perez was one of the men who had been so badly injured during the collision and sent off to the hospital in San Jose. Toyuka said that the black gang sometimes talked of feeding Vuychek to the boilers. The boy whispered that even the captain had told Vuychek to stay away from them. But then Toyuka said they were all good men, and wouldn’t have really killed Vuychek, at least not aboard ship. Then, from long custom, he bowed to Lady Yee, and disappeared toward the kitchen and the promise of more custard tarts.
Lady Yee was now sure she had accomplished her ends as far as Dr. Neruda’s reputation was concerned. The focus of suspicion and speculation had been rightly focused on other quarters, but his name and motives still hung in the ether. She decided to gamble on the ship’s cook as the next most likely person to have an interest, and therefore an opinion, about the matter at hand. Lady Yee confidently smiled to herself. Li-Lee had told her that Mr. Beal had consumed two bottles of dark beer in the garden, along with three pork pastries and a half pot of strong mustard. It was to be hoped that Mr. Beal would be in a very relaxed and loquacious frame of mind by now.
With this thought in mind, Lady Yee decided to set the helm on a more rewarding course. She asked her guests to indulge her one last time by allowing the ship’s cook to answer a few questions. By now the second serving of Captain Hammond’s Russian punch had taken full effect, and the gentlemen in question would have allowed Lady Yee to conduct a Mexican bullfight in the parlor if it would have been of some assistance.
The ship’s cook was a slack-jawed, raw-boned, loose-jointed Cornishman of an indeterminate age somewhere between forty and sixty. His straw-colored hair was sparse, and his mouth was set in a permanent scowl that appeared even more sinister when he found occasion to smile, which was seldom. For a cook, his lack of bulk spoke of a man not overly fond of his own food, and his darkly wrinkled skin indicated that perhaps he had once been a lowly deckhand.
Mr. Beal was shown into the room and stood, cap in hand. His eyes were generally cast downward, but he had a way of looking out of the corners of his eyes that gave Lady Yee the impression of a chameleon. He spoke in a clipped Cornish manner that rarely into
ned intent. In fact, his voice displayed no emotion whatsoever, and what passed for humor rested in what went unspoken, which challenged interlocutors to complete the jest for themselves.
The county sheriff was the first to speak this time. He had gained some momentum under the influence of the punch and was feeling the weight of his office. Once seeing Mr. Beal, who looked somewhat like a refugee from a road gang, Sheriff Winslow took on an authoritative tone. He demanded to know where Malakoff had gone. Mr. Beal only shrugged and said he hadn’t a clue. The sheriff then asked who had killed Clausa Vuychek, and the cook again answered that he didn’t know, but he added that the news hardly saddened or surprised him. Then he was asked if there was any bad blood between the cook and Vuychek, which caused Mr. Beal to chuckle. He said Vuychek never got in his way about anything. The cook grinned and said the rat didn’t dare fool with the man that cooked his food. Mr. Beal declared he knew a dozen ways to make a sailor wish he were dead without actually killing him, at least most of the time.
Lady Yee could see this line of questioning was leading nowhere, and begged permission to interrupt with some questions of her own. Sheriff Winslow nodded. She told the cook that having read the crew registry, she was aware that the only men who had stayed under Captain Malakoff’s command for any appreciable length of time were Mr. Perez, the chief engineer; Jojo Toyuka, the cabin boy; Clausa Vuychek, a deckhand; and Thaddeus Beal, the cook. Lady Yee went on to say she thought this showed remarkable loyalty to a man who had been variously characterized by members of his own crew as villainous, dangerously unqualified, basically crazy, habitually intoxicated, perpetually angry, unjust, and uncivilized. She wanted to know what had inspired Mr. Beal’s constancy to such a figure.
The cook looked at his cap for a moment, and then met Lady Yee’s disarming smile. He said he remained with the ship for the best of reasons, because she paid well and fed well, and Malakoff stayed out of his galley. This peaked Lady Yee’s interest, and she asked what the captain liked to eat. She was surprised when Mr. Beal said he had no idea, as the captain only cooked for himself in a makeshift galley next to his quarters. It was always kept locked, and the cabin boy cleaned the dishes and pots, and was warned not to speak of it. Mr. Rice, feeling his punch, asked, half in humor, if Malakoff, like Vuychek, was afraid he might be poisoned. Mr. Beal very slowly turned his head to address the city attorney, and after locking eyes, calmly said he thought that a very reasonable assumption on the captain’s part, but in fact he believed there were other more personal reasons to which he was not privy. Then Lady Yee interjected another question that caught her guests off guard. She asked Mr. Beal just how devoted Vuychek was to his Muslim faith, to which the cook simply laughed and shook his head. The dead man was all bluff and bluster. In fact, the cook testified he had never known Vuychek to go into a mosque, or bow toward Mecca in prayer, or indeed do anything remotely religious. Mr. Beal grinned and said that as a Muslim, much less a human being, Vuychek must have been a miserable disappointment to Allah, as well as his parents, if he could remember who they were. This drew a slight wave of laughter from the gathering.
Mr. Beal seemed very pleased with his ability to draw a laugh from such an august audience, and might have gone on to further quaint Cornish jocularities had not Lady Yee struck first. She drew back their full attention with a little silver table gong used to call the maid. And when she had centered Mr. Beal’s full attention, and using her utmost authoritative manner, like an officer speaking to the crew, she asked him pointedly what kind of pills Malakoff took repeatedly, and what he drank from his flask. Without waiting for an answer, Lady Yee went on to warn Mr. Beal not to bother lying to her, as she had ten years as second-in-command of her own ship (which was stretching the truth without breaking any covenants), and that she could smell a bilge-born prevarication from over the horizon through a dense fog (which was certainly the truth as far as Captain Hammond was concerned).
Mr. Beal started to nervously play with his cap as he looked at his shoes. After a moment, he said he knew nothing of that. He lived and worked in the galley, that was all, and he’d never even seen the inside of the captain’s cabin, much less observed his habits. It was here that Mr. Atwood rose to call Mr. Beal a bald-faced liar. He had personally seen Malakoff and Beal trading words in the food stores locker on several occasions, and had witnessed the cook taking steaming pots of something that smelled odious to the captain’s cabin at strange hours of the watch.
Mr. Beal found himself caught between two contrary waves, and nervously explained he had often issued out stores to the captain, the food lockers were part of the galley, and yes, on occasions he had boiled up large batches of a strange concoction using ingredients and a recipe given to him by Malakoff himself. When Lady Yee inquired what those ingredients were, Mr. Beal said gingerroot, licorice root, cinnamon sticks, willow bark, comfrey, honey, and a quart of apple cider vinegar.
Lady Yee suddenly smiled and nodded her head. It was obvious to her husband that she now believed she had most of the parts in play, and was only waiting for the obvious answers to come from the cook’s lips without hints from her. After a moment, Lady Yee returned to her original stern demeanor. She asked Mr. Beal what Malakoff drank from his flask, and after a few stutters the cook admitted it was Polish vodka. But when asked about the pills the captain took so often, Mr. Beal insisted he knew nothing about them. He said only Vuychek knew what the pills were, because he was the one that Malakoff always sent ashore to get them. And as he had said before, Vuychek and he were not on familiar terms.
Then Lady Yee saw her mark, softened her approach, and said she believed Mr. Beal to be an old hand with long experience of the world. And old hands know things without being told. She said that under the circumstances, she’d be quite surprised if an old sweat like Mr. Beal, who’d been, after all, with Malakoff for years, hadn’t formed an opinion on the matter.
Mr. Beal fidgeted with his cap for a moment, looked at his shoes again, and mumbled something under his breath that no one could hear. Lady Yee encouraged the cook to speak up. Mr. Beal said he believed Malakoff was an opium eater, and had been for some time. He said he’d heard that Malakoff had once suffered a serious injury to his spine, and that he suffered from debilitating sciatica at times. Because of this, and a diet that the cook believed was most probably simply meant to accommodate ease of digestion and passing waste (the latter because of a dangerous form of constipation suffered by all opium addicts), the cook came to believe the captain was eating opium. And also because he always chased it with a swallow of vodka, which every sailor knows makes the drug work faster. But Mr. Beal swore on his mother’s grave that he and the captain never once had words concerning any of this.
Lady Yee smiled like a contented cat. She asked the gentlemen present if they had any more questions, and Marshal Sanchez again produced the rusted dirk and showed it to Mr. Beal. The marshal asked if he had seen it before, and Mr. Beal smiled and replied that he had four just like it in his galley, only his were in better condition. When asked who might have owned the knife, the cook shook his head and said he wouldn’t know, but he was sure there were at least three men aboard who carried blades like it. Such items were easily available in any port in the Pacific. Captain Hammond took the opportunity to confirm this fact by interjecting that such knives were a common Indian export. The manufacture was cheap, to be sure, but the Indian steel was good and kept a keen edge and the leather scabbards were well greased against seawater. He said his own crewmen sometimes carried them, but in general professional seamen working sail preferred more utilitarian multiplex knives, models with three or more blades of different sizes. The fact that the blades folded into the handle precluded gutting oneself accidently, which may or may not have been a factor in the present circumstances.
Lady Yee smiled at her husband’s timely interjection, and asked the other guests if they had any further questions. Only Mr. Campion showed some concern for the craggy old cook, by asking what he p
lanned to do now. Mr. Beal smiled a crooked smile and said there was good work for cooks in the railroad camps, and he looked forward to working where the threat of drowning wasn’t such a constant hazard, and where the cookhouse didn’t pitch around at all angles.
Lady Yee thanked Mr. Beal and passed him a five-dollar gold piece. The houseboy was called to show the man out, and then all fell quiet for long moments while the men at the table pondered what they had heard that afternoon. Lady Yee took advantage of the pause to unobtrusively leave the table. She parted without saying a word. None was necessary. She knew full well, men being what they are, that every detail of what had passed that afternoon would be common knowledge in a few days. But she also knew that the blood-scented hounds of idle speculation and dangerous gossip had been turned from Dr. Neruda and were now encouraged to course on a more promising trail, one salted with dark possibilities and with a very promising perpetrator to liven suppositions all around. After all, Malakoff was a fugitive who had escaped custody and remained at large. But to Lady Yee’s way of thinking, though she personally refused to offer judgment either way without proof, any scent that led opinion away from Dr. Neruda and the infirmary was useful and providential. By the time the authorities got their hands on the elusive Malakoff again, all sentiments to the contrary would have moved on to greener pastures, and Dr. Neruda would have been all but forgotten.
The Silver Lotus Page 21
