EQMM, Sep-Oct 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Tell me, Andrew,” I said, “were you here in the cabin before me on the morning I found Eliza's body?"

  "Nay,” he replied, “I was above-decks with Stoddard, till Mr. Rossiter came and fetched me."

  "Well, someone must have been here. I heard water running in the basin. There was no one to turn off the tap, but when I went to look, it had stopped."

  "Aye, well, these taps have to be pumped up to get pressure. Primed, y'see. They shut off unless you pump ‘em up again. Sometimes they shut off when they're scarce used. I tried to wash myself a bit after I went looking for that sheet to wrap her in, but the tank was empty just then, and there was no water at all."

  So that was how one of his hairs had found its way onto the basin. Trying to wash off his tears so the men wouldn't notice.

  "When you searched the ship for Captain Logan,” I said, “who searched these quarters?"

  "Nobody. He'd not been spending his nights here, and we didn't wish to disturb her, not till we were certain. And then when you found her—"

  "What is beyond the dining parlor? Are there other compartments?"

  "Stoddard's stateroom and m'own, and the steward's. The ship's kitchen and the steward's pantry."

  "May I look into the pantry for a moment?” A conviction was growing upon me.

  He led me through the dining parlor and into a narrow passage, from which a sliding door gave entrance to the little cubicle. Two walls were lined with wire-netted shelves of canned and packaged and bottled goods that reached from floor to ceiling. “What is kept on the top shelf?” I asked him.

  "See for yourself,” said McKenzie, and pulled a curtain at the far side of the room. He extracted precisely what I had been hoping for—a wooden ladder, quite long enough to reach the hook from which Eliza Logan's body had hung.

  As I climbed up, my black silk skirt caught on one of the rungs, but it was worth it. On the top pantry shelf stood two bottles of good brandy. But there was space for two more.

  He had needed the ladder to obtain his provisions. He had taken it from the after-cabin. Brought it back here to the pantry, where he knew it belonged. Climbed up and supplied himself with brandy.

  And now, I was almost certain, Captain Dayton Logan was still somewhere aboard the China Star, living on brandy and fine Virginia ham.

  * * * *

  When I stopped to unsnag my best gown from the slivered rung of the pantry ladder, I found caught in the splintered wood a small, three-cornered fragment of blue-flowered calico. Eliza's wrapper had caught there just as my skirt had done. But had she climbed up the ladder by choice? Or had she been carried there—drugged asleep, perhaps, or unconscious?

  I put the scrap of fabric carefully away with my notes, and said nothing to Philip of it, nor of my suspicions concerning Logan. Next day at noon, we made port at Gabinea, and my cousin went off with Andrew McKenzie to inform whatever authorities they could find.

  If he was still aboard, Logan might try to make his escape now that we were in port. But something in me doubted he would bother to attempt it. His last hope was gone. Eliza was under the sea.

  Feeling almost overwhelmed by all I had seen in those last few days, I went ashore myself that morning, needing the solidity of simple earth beneath my feet—or at least the solid boards of Gabinea docks. I was fending off a seller of palm-leaf fans when I heard a little girl's voice cry out very near me.

  "Bet you won't!"

  "Betcher I will!” This time, a boy, somewhat older by the sound of him.

  "Won't!"

  "Will!"

  "Won't neither! I will, though!"

  A chubby girl of around four years, with a head of carrot-colored hair so thick she appeared to be wearing a fur hat with braids hanging from it, came dashing out from behind a pile of barrels on the dock, put a small, sticky hand into mine, walked two or three steps with me, then laughed and ran away again.

  "Ma!” shouted the boy. “'Ropa's a-making advances again!"

  "Europa Lavinia Thomas!” cried a woman's voice in an East London accent. “Don't you go a-rollickin’ innocent gentlefolk like that! Why, the lady'll take you for a wild sawwage!"

  The two children ran off after a man selling monkeys, and “Ma” came laboring down the gangplank with two smaller offspring clinging on to her skirts. She was plump and pleasant-faced, with hair of a less startling red than her children's. She laughed and dusted her floury hands on her apron, whitening a baby at either side.

  "I'm that sorry, ma'am,” she said. “Did she dirty yer glove? If you care to come aboard, I'm sure to have somink'll clean it."

  "Oh, there's no harm done,” I said, glancing down at the name of the ship on the berthing card. “I beg your pardon, but—are you Mrs. Captain Thomas?"

  I had stumbled on—or been overwhelmed by—the mother hen of the Nancy Bright.

  * * * *

  "I knowed as that poor lamb would come to grief,” she said, wiping her eyes. “And such a dreadful way to go. A-hangin’ there as if she was some turrible willain."

  We sat at tea in the after-cabin of the Nancy. It was a warm, cluttered room, full of hobbyhorses, one-armed dollies, alphabet blocks, darning eggs, issues of The Ladies’ Companion, ships-in-bottles, and music books.

  She followed my gaze. “Them's for the melodeon,” she said. “It's somewheres under them quilt blocks.” She sighed. “I do love a melo-deon. Can't play it, not a scrap. But it's ever such a comfort at sea."

  "Eliza seemed very fond of her spinet,” I said.

  "Ah, but it weren't hers, not rightly. That's how all the trouble come betwixt ‘em. If I'd ever ‘a thought it would end as it done—” She shuddered, and put another dollop of honey in her willowware cup. “But somebody ‘ad to tell ‘er. She were owed that, poor mite. No, that there pianer was Lucy's. Logan's other wife."

  I gulped some tea and said nothing.

  "That fancy bed was ‘ers, too,” Mrs. Thomas continued. “And the carpet. And the sewing machine. All ‘ers. Had money, Lucy did. That's ‘ow Logan come by his share of the Star."

  "How did she die?” I said.

  "Didn't,” she replied, and took a sip of tea.

  "You mean—she was murdered?"

  "Oh no, my dear. Left him. Didn't know her own mind when she married him, that's my belief. Thought sea captains was romantic, I don't doubt. ‘igh-strung, Lucy were. I thank the Lord I ain't strung at all. I'm kneaded like a good penny loaf, and so's Cap'n T., and we likes it that way."

  "Where is Lucy now? Do you know?"

  "Lives someplace tony. Inland. Vienner, I believe. Ships don't dock at Vienner."

  "But they do in Maine."

  Mrs. Thomas cradled her teacup in her two hands. “Poor Eliza. Poor little mite. She never knowed Logan more'n a fortnight afore they was wed. But sixteen, she were, and a great ache in her to get out of her pa's house. Logan took her to Boston for a week, and she said he was handsome, then, with his grey whiskers and his uniform, and he didn't seem old to her at all. Well, I expect he felt young with her. And he's a decent man at heart, and that lonesome all these years, you wouldn't believe it. A clean start and a new life, that'll be what he wanted. But it weren't clean, were it? Couldn't be, not with Lucy still wed to ‘im. I did pity him, miss. Though, mind you, he needed horsewhippin’ for misleadin’ that poor mite like he done, and so I told him, and Cap'n T. told him, too."

  "Could he not divorce this Lucy?"

  "A lady like ‘er, with an uppity fambly, as everybody knowed every whisper of? They'd keep ‘im in the courts a hundred years, tryin’ to get back her dowry. And he'd spent it, you see, buyin’ into the Star."

  "So. He'd have lost his ship if they divorced. And he was locked out of all normal living. No wonder he couldn't bear to tell Eliza. He'd have lost her as well."

  Mrs. T. nodded. “Thought better of it after they was wed, that's my belief. Takes her back to that sour old grinder of a father of hers, he does, and off he sails in the Star for a three years’ voyage. Th
ought she'd dreamed her marriage, that's what she told me."

  "So when Logan returned at last,” I said, “she begged to sail with him, as you do with your husband."

  "Wanted to start a fambly. Asked me how I keeps the little ‘uns from flyin’ outa their hammocks in rough seas. But in that museum of Lucy's—” Mrs. Thomas paused. “P'rhaps I didn't ought to say this, Miss Harriet, you bein’ unmarried. But once Eliza'd shipped out with him—Well, Logan hardly touched her in the married way after they come aboard. It was Lucy's place, do you see, and everything put him in mind of ‘er, I expect. Eliza come to me that day at Tacoya and wept, poor little rabbit.” Great tears rolled down her own face now. “God forgive me for a meddlin’ old biddy. I should never've told her the truth."

  I knew I ought to reassure her, ought to mouth the conventional wisdom and tell her that knowing the truth is always best. But when the illusion of loving is all there is to save you, and all there will ever be, then truth may snap you in two like a cheap necklace. Mrs. Thomas was right. She should never have told Eliza Logan the truth.

  "Were Eliza and Andrew McKenzie lovers, Mrs. Thomas?” I whispered.

  "I do hope so,” she said softly. “I hope to God they was."

  * * * *

  I did not sleep that night. Just after midnight, I rose, dressed, and made my way down the corridor, past cabin after dark cabin from which fitful masculine snores could be discerned. It seemed to go on forever, that corridor, a whole cynical universe of tiny, airless boxes from which simple human connection was forever banished.

  It was very dark on deck, with only a few lanterns lighted and just one sailor on watch. I made my way to the stern rail and turned to look out to sea, thinking of my father, and of what awaited me in Hong Kong. Thinking of Philip.

  I did not hear the footsteps approach me. Out of nowhere, as though from the heavy, sodden air itself, a broad hand smashed itself over my mouth. “Don't cry out!” said Logan.

  Though I could not see him, I knew at once who it was. I nodded my head, and his hand relaxed its pressure a little. “If I let you go,” he said in a hoarse, grating whisper, “you must promise not to turn around."

  I nodded again, and he uncovered my mouth. “Did you kill her?” I said. “Did you kill Eliza?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't believe you."

  "I killed her heart."

  "But you didn't put the noose round her neck."

  "No. When I came in, she was standing on the ladder with the cord around her throat."

  I wanted terribly to turn and see his face, but I reached out a hand into the hot darkness instead. To my surprise, his fingertips touched mine, then grasped them hard. So we stood, awkward and equal.

  "She never asked questions,” he whispered. “She knew only the self that was born when I met her."

  "And the other? Lucy's husband?"

  "I had not seen my wife in twenty years! She was scarcely real to me anymore. And I loved Eliza so. I could not give her up."

  "But you abandoned her to her family and went back to sea."

  "I meant to stay away, write to her, tell her the truth. Do the decent thing. But I could not. I regretted what I had done to her. But it was a kind of death for me, being without her."

  Like my father's exile to Hong Kong, I thought. Like my refusal of Philip.

  "That day on Tacoya docks,” Logan went on, “I knew from the moment I saw her that she had learned the truth. I said such things to her—It was nothing to do with that necklace, nor with McKenzie. I think I wanted her to be as guilty as I was. And I knew she was not. She could never be."

  I let go his hand and turned to look at him. His face, in the flickering light of the stern lantern, was not at all that of a madman.

  "Tell me how she died,” I told him. “You must. They will ask you in Singapore."

  "I will not be in Singapore,” he said.

  He shrugged, hunching his shoulders against the weight of his memory, and in my mind, I saw them both. Heard the wash of the sea against the hull. The battering of wakeful birds against cages.

  "I dared not come too close,” he began, “for her feet barely clung to the ladder. I begged her forgiveness. Told her we might yet love one another. She said nothing, only looked at me, but I saw no anger in her face. And then she—stepped away, that was all. Into the air."

  It sounded two bells. From somewhere ashore, there was music and the laughter of girls who did not mind what man lay in their arms.

  "I ran towards her,” Logan went on, “to lift her body up. I might have saved her. But like a fool I tripped over a chair and fell. I was too late. Too late."

  If it were Philip, I thought, if I had seen his body dangling there on that hook, what would I have done? Wept? Screamed? No. It is not my nature. I should have wanted him down from there, whatever it cost me. Wanted him once more in my arms, dead or living.

  "I'm a coward,” Logan said, as though he had read my mind. “Lucy knew what I was. And all cowards are selfish. When Eliza was dead, I thought of what they might do to me. I thought of food and drink, and where I might hide till I could make my escape. I behaved like a murderer because that is what I am. It has been in me all these years, like syphilis. Turn around, now. Go back to your cabin. Do not interfere."

  * * * *

  He would let the sea have him, I knew that. He had been waiting all these days for me, to tell me the scrap of truth that was his story. Had he seen something in me that might understand him—a something that lived outside the cages of convention and decorum and false modesty and smothering religion?

  Dayton Logan had not put Eliza into a cage. He had opened the door of the one into which she had been born and had lived all her life, and Lucy or no Lucy, they might have been happy. He had told her so. But Eliza was a cagebird, too frightened to fly.

  I found myself thinking of Lucy herself, in whatever “tony” cage her uppity family had found for her. And of Philip's wife, Cornelia, too.

  I did not wait to hear the slight splash Logan's body must have made as it slipped from the stern of the China Star into the dark, tangled waters of Gabinea docks, nor hear the cries when he was found the next morning. I did not watch as McKenzie went into the after-cabin, brought out the cages of songbirds, and let them fly away to their fate.

  I left Logan behind in his darkness and went down again, into that interminable corridor of passengers’ cabins. There was a dim light under one door, and I knocked softly. “Philip?” I said. “Are you awake?"

  I heard his footsteps, and in a moment the door opened. “Why, Harriet,” he said gently. “You've been crying. You never cry."

  "Does Cornelia love you, Philip? Is she glad to be your wife?"

  He did not flinch. “Not mine in particular. It's a game she could play with anyone. Less boring than whist. But only just."

  I laid my palm upon his tired face. “Back in Devon, I was afraid of myself,” I said, “and all cowards are selfish. I am braver now. Let me in."

  Copyright © 2006 Margaret Lawrence

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  THE BRICK by Natasha Cooper

  Natasha Cooper's series starring British barrister Trish Maguire has proved popular on both sides of the Atlantic. St. Martin's Press published the seventh novel, Gagged and Bound, last September, with another expected later this year. Ms. Cooper's second story for us is a non-series tale that harks back to her days as an editor in London.

  It all started with the broken window. That was what was so infuriating. If those wretched children hadn't found the brick next-door's cowboy builders had left in the front garden and thought it would be fun to smash a big bit of clean glass, none of it would have happened. We'd still have been okay; not in seventh heaven or anything extravagant like that, but okay.

  The randomness of it still makes me swear. It needn't have happened; none of it. That's what gets to me when I let myself think about it.

  There I was peacefully sitting on a beanbag on the floor (we
'd sanded the boards by then but not varnished them and they looked a bit splintery; but they were clean, which was something after the state we'd found them in when we tore up the old lino) reading short stories for a contest. They were all about spouses killing each other, of course: short stories for contests nearly always are. And I'd been congratulating myself rather because however livid I'd been with John, I'd never, even in my wildest, most secret fantasies, wanted to kill him. Stiffen him, maybe; tell him not to be such a baby and to get on out there and do his bit of the bargain, like I'd always done mine. I mean, I'd given up my job when it was clear that he needed more input than I'd been able to give him while I was working so hard.

  It wasn't only the comfort and the listening and the putting up with stress-induced sulks, you see; he'd needed a lot more practical help with all sorts of things, and meals suddenly became important to him in a way they'd never been before. We'd always just picked for supper whenever we both got back from work, but suddenly he wanted three courses with both of us sitting down at the table, whenever he got back. And my publishing salary just wasn't up to paying a housekeeper, not after tax and all the things I'd had to pay for—you know, decent clothes and that sort of thing. So I'd given up. I'd always done a bit of freelance, luckily, as it turned out. So when John cracked up, I still had all my contacts in place.

  Anyway, where was I? Being on my own all day means that I do get very short of chat, which is why I can't stop talking when there's any opportunity. Sorry about that. I've lost my drift. Oh, yes, the brick. Well, you see, there I was, sitting by the window, thinking that at least this titchy little South London cottage was a bit lighter than our Kensington house, when this bloody brick crashed through the window and landed by my feet. It must have been in next-door's garden for a while because it was coated with mud and had wood lice clinging to it. You know, those prehistoric-looking horrid little black things.

  They were all over the house when we bought it, but once we'd sorted the damp we got rid of most of them. They crunch under your bare feet. In a way that was nearly the worst thing, getting out of bed that first morning in the new house and hearing the crunch under my feet. I could have hit John then. I wouldn't have, honestly, and I never told him that's how I felt, but it was the last straw.