A Burial at Sea

by Charles Finch

  “Oh, no, sir,” said Pimples. “They’re not allowed.”

  “What a shame that these must go to waste, then,” said Lenox, unrolling a soft leather case that held half-a-dozen cigars. “For myself I don’t smoke them that often, and I have a dozen more in my cabin.”

  “Sorry,” said Pimples.

  All of the boys looked at them longingly, but nobody spoke. Lenox smiled inwardly, trying not to let it show. “Well,” he said at last, “what if you had to smoke them—orders of a member of Parliament? Who would tell the captain as much?”

  They were still silent but Lenox could feel their willpower sapping. At last Teddy said, “Might I hold one?”

  He took one, paused, and then, apprehensively, took a candle from the table and lit the cigar.

  There was a moment of stillness and then the other four boys nearly leaped at Lenox, their voices bursting out of them at last—“Oh, thank you,” “If you insist,” “Shame to let them go to waste”—and took the remaining cigars.

  After this the formality of the earlier part of the evening vanished, and the boys’ formality was replaced by a definite bonhomie born of the late hour, the champagne, and Lenox’s cigars. Pimples did an extensive and deadly accurate impression of the chaplain teaching them Scripture every morning, which Lenox laughed at despite himself. Then there were a round of toasts, remarkably similar to the wardroom’s, in fact, the Queen, various sweethearts from home, the admiralty—but also, rather touchingly, the boys collectively toasted their mothers. Lenox raised his own glass and thought of his mother, dead now, and felt a stir of emotion within.

  When the wine gave out nobody wanted to go to bed, but of course the midshipmen had lessons in the morning. Lenox, thinking perhaps he ought to leave Teddy to bask in the glory of having indirectly provided them cigars and food, thanked them for their hospitality. Each boy in turn shook his hand and clapped him on the shoulder and said with great ardor that he ought to come back any time.

  “Why not tomorrow?” one of the younger boys even said, thinking perhaps of further hams and loaves of bread, an invitation that drew a look of disapproval from Cresswell.

  “We oughtn’t to tax Mr. Lenox with our company, but I hope he will return later in the trip.”

  “With great pleasure,” said Lenox.

  He walked through to his cabin somewhat tipsily. It was the end of the first watch, nearly midnight, and he heard the increasingly familiar creaking of the ship as one watch turned into another, a wave of men going downstairs to their rest and another wave rising to the deck to assume their duties.

  As he sat at his desk, drinking a glass of cold water to sober himself, he started another letter. This one was to Edmund, a report on Teddy’s high spirits and seeming good cheer. He fell asleep over his pen, and so missed the cry that went up on deck some minutes later.

  Only the next morning did he hear that the first breath of that most dreaded movement had been whispered on board: mutiny.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  It was midday before he would hear of it. Indeed, he woke up thinking that despite the murder, the ship felt exceedingly affable to him, after his supper in the gun room, and when he went on deck following his eggs and tea the only thing on his mind was the ship’s rigging, and a possible ascent of it.

  Lenox’s trip with Martin to that perch of the mizzenmast where Halifax had died had piqued his interest. The climb had been precarious, but now he felt determined that he would go higher. He wanted to conquer the ship in all of her dimensions. Nobody would be able to lord over him Old Joe Coffey, the seventy-year-old sailor who had his grog in the crow’s nest, if he climbed there himself.

  The morning was placid, thankfully, the wind nearly still. Carrow was the officer on duty. Lenox was torn between the desire to go up the rigging and the desire to ask him about the medallion. In the end the detective in him won out. The crow’s nest would have to wait.

  “Is it a bad time to have a word?” he asked Carrow.

  “Not an ideal one—but if it’s about Halifax?”

  “It is, in fact. I understand you served on the Chesapeake?”

  Carrow turned to him, his somber face filled with surprise. “I did. Who told you?”

  “Nobody. I saw a medallion of yours, actually, thanking you for your service. A parting present from the captain, I thought.”

  “How on earth did you see that?”

  “You know the object to which I’m referring?”

  “I do, and I wish I knew how you did.”

  “Do you have the medallion?”

  “Yes, I do—I keep it in a box with my watch and my cuff links. As far as I know it hasn’t gone missing. I hope you haven’t been among my things.”

  “I haven’t. Would you mind if I saw the medallion with my own eyes?”

  “You must explain to me, Mr. Lenox—”

  “Would you indulge me by showing me the box, before I do?”

  Carrow flung an angry word or two at the bosun, who was at the ship’s wheel, that he would be available below deck in the event that he was needed. “I’ll be gone five minutes.”

  They went to Carrow’s cabin, though when they actually arrived at the door the lieutenant held a hand up. Lenox waited in the wardroom and Carrow came out with the box a moment later.

  More than enough time to hide the medallion, if he had been the one to steal it back. Though it was just as likely to be a gesture of resentment at Lenox prying into his life.

  “Here is the box,” Carrow said.

  Lenox watched him open it. “I see your cuff links.”

  “Yes, they were from my father. My watch, as I said. A personal memento”—this when he hastily palmed a dried rose in his hand—“and here!” he said triumphantly. “My medallion! Now, before another question from you, please tell me how you knew of it!”

  Lenox was struck dumb. Carrow passed him the medal.

  “Is there a duplicate of this?” he asked.

  “No, I received it and have treasured it since then. It hasn’t left the box other than once or twice, on full dress occasions. To the best of my knowledge.”

  “The best of your knowledge is, in this instance, insufficient, I’m afraid. That medallion was in my hands yesterday.”

  “How?”

  “It was found next to Halifax’s body.”

  Now it was Carrow’s turn to look startled. “How can that be?” he said. “How is it in my box, if that was the case?”

  “I don’t know. It was stolen from my cabin yesterday afternoon, after I had been examining it. Did you lend it to Halifax? Would he have taken it?”

  “No.”

  “When was the last time you wore it?”

  “Not for some six months at least, when we dined with an Indian pasha in full uniform. Since then it has been in this box. Or had been, I would have said.”

  “I see.”

  Lenox was silent for a long while now. Carrow stood by him in a state of increasing consternation. Finally he said, “Well? Have you concluded that I killed Halifax? I know in detective stories it was always the chap who found the body. Only one problem with that, of course—”

  “Yes, you were on the poop deck with my nephew, I’m aware. No, I don’t suspect you. What puzzles me is how the medallion came to be next to the body. I think it possible that you’ve been framed.”

  “I want to give this scoundrel his lashes for myself,” he said in a froth of anger, “this, the mutiny…”

  “It would have been pointless of the criminal to frame an officer on duty during the commission of the murder, however, and that is what puzzles me. I wonder if there was some other motive.”

  “There could not be. I was—”

  Lenox looked up. “Did you say mutiny?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Mutiny—I heard you mention the word?”

  “Yes. There was shot rolled down the main deck last night, as the first watch gave way to the middle.”

  “Can you tell me
what happened in greater detail?”

  “Do you think it might be relevant to the case?”

  “Of course!” said Lenox. “An officer is murdered and mutiny against the officers of the middle watch—they may well be linked, yes.”

  Carrow frowned. “That makes it all the more serious. Perhaps you had better speak to Captain Martin. I need to be on deck, anyhow.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Lenox. “Keep a close eye on that medallion. And I’ll ask you—as I’ve asked the only other person I mentioned it to, Captain Martin—to keep its existence quiet.”

  “I will.”

  Carrow walked off. What Lenox hadn’t mentioned was that Carrow had had the perfect opportunity to steal the medallion back, as good as anyone else in the wardroom, when Lenox and Mitchell had spoken on deck while Billings was on duty. What might Carrow be hiding?

  His mind full of questions, Lenox sought out the captain in his quarters. It was nearly noon, meaning that the naval day would begin soon. But there might be time for a quick word still.

  He knocked on the door and was called in. The captain was sitting at his desk, writing in a large book of red leather—his log of the voyage, evidently. Normally this contained only measurements of latitude and speed, that sort of thing, but now he was writing, Lenox could see, an account of some sort. A half-empty bottle of spirits was at hand, though there was no glass to be seen, and there were the leavings of three or four cigars in an ebony ashtray.

  Martin set down his pencil. “Mr. Lenox, how may I help you?”

  “Are you writing in reference to this mutiny?”

  “For heaven’s sake don’t call it that—one disgruntled bastard is all it was.”

  “Apologies.”

  “There’s absolutely no evidence of a concerted attempt at revolt. This is one of the most contented ships in Her Majesty’s navy.”

  “So it had struck me.”

  Martin leaned back in his chair, put his pen down, and rubbed an eye. “It’s a terrible business.”

  “I came to see whether it might be connected to Halifax’s death.”

  “The problem with one mutinous sailor,” the captain went on without looking at Lenox, “is that every other fool on board begins to wonder why their comrade is aggrieved, and whether they should be too. You hear of one man getting shorted half a ration of grog and leading an entire ship into revolution against the captain for it. They’re not all clever men, these sailors—more courage than intelligence.”

  “May I ask what happened?”

  “It was while the first watch gave over to the middle watch, which means there was a hopeless muddle of people on board. Shot was rolled down the main deck.”

  “You’ll have to explain.”

  “It’s rather an old-fashioned method of—well, of warning, I suppose you would say. One of the great iron balls that goes in our guns, weight about a pound, is rolled down the deck toward the officers and midshipmen. If it picks up enough speed it can hurt a man quite badly.”

  “If so many people were on board someone must have seen who did it.”

  “It was dark, of course, and the balls aren’t very large.”

  “Do you think whoever rolled the shot killed Halifax?”

  Martin sighed. “I hope not. It would be going things backward—an expression of unhappiness preceded by something as violent and inhuman as that murder. Normally you would imagine the events in reverse order. But it may be. It’s impossible to say. I spoke with some of the leading seamen, good long-serving Lucys, the quartermaster, the captain of the maintop … none of them had heard any stirring of discontent.”

  “And indeed the ship seemed a picture of happiness, after the storm,” Lenox said. “Certainly nobody looked likely to disobey orders, and as far as I observed there were no black stares behind the officers’ backs.”

  “Precisely.”

  “That’s what makes me think it’s connected to Halifax.”

  Martin stood. “This trip has been a curse. Shot rolled aboard my Lucy! Never once did it happen in the Indias, and now we’re four days from Plymouth Harbor and it does. Well, I must be on deck.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Yes, and trying to think.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Not by murder, though.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Would the captain have been on deck?”

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

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

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

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

  “Certainly not any warning of that sort.”

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

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

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

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

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