A Burial at Sea

by Charles Finch

  “We agree, Mr. Lenox! Now, your peculiar question?”

  “Ah, yes. I wondered about the contents of Halifax’s stomach when he died.”

  “Oh?”

  “Not the food, so much as whether—well, it sounds indelicate, but my friend Thomas McConnell, who is a doctor, will smell the stomach for alcohol, if the body is … fresh enough. I realize it sounds morbid.”

  “I do quite the same, and in fact I think I’ll have made a note of it … yes, here’s the book, this little hardbacked one.”

  Tradescant flipped through the pages. “Well?” said Lenox when he had stopped.

  “Hmm. Whisky, it says here, Scotch whisky. Strange, now that you’ve drawn my attention to it—we don’t get whisky on the ship much, the men preferring rum and the officers brandy—but there was a definite odor of whisky.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Lenox went to sleep not long afterward, his stream of consciousness racing but muddied by drink. The next morning he woke with a single, clarified thought: Might Jacob Martin have murdered his second lieutenant?

  It would account for the whisky; for Halifax’s apparently willing attendance at a midnight meeting halfway up one of the masts; Martin’s self-possession the night of the murder; the theft of the medallion and the penknife (presumably to shift blame away from himself) would have been easy, as nobody questions a captain’s movements aboard his own ship. And of course, most of all, he was a figure beyond suspicion.

  Which meant he was the first person Lenox ought to have considered.

  Still, some small part of him rebelled against the idea of Martin as a murderer. It wasn’t the man’s religious faith; that was so common among murderers as to be mundane. Nor was it his leadership of the Lucy. Rather, it was some intrinsic conservatism that seemed to define Martin’s character, a deficit of fury. The crime had been at once savage and plotted, and the mind behind it didn’t seem to be the mind Lenox thought the captain to have.

  Then again, Pettegree had identified Martin as a man of violent temper.

  The alternatives that his mind kept circling toward were Lieutenant Lee, despite the man’s placid temperament, and Lieutenant Mitchell. Mitchell was the more obvious suspect, because of his temper and because he was new aboard, the only change to the wardroom. For years the Lucy had sailed without violent incident, and within a few weeks of Mitchell’s arrival on board a man was dead.

  As for Lee, there was the matter of his steward, who slept not in front of his door but down below deck amid the guns, with the rest of the sailors. It would have been difficult for the other officers to slip past their sleeping stewards, all situated in the hallways outside of their cabins. It would have been easy for Lee.

  Or Martin.

  After Lenox had accepted coffee, kippers, and eggs from McEwan, he took one of the last of Lady Jane’s oranges and sat down to write her a letter as he ate it. In it he spoke of Follow the Leader, of Teddy, of life aboard the ship. He reassured her that he had yet to succumb to scurvy. The letter ended with a short benediction, not too intrusive he hoped, for her and their child, after writing which he sealed the letter in an envelope and placed it next to the other letter he had written her, which sat in the battered Paul Storr toast rack that had always served as the organizer of his correspondence.

  It was a still sort of day, not much wind, and while Lenox strolled the quarterdeck a huge indolent sailmaker’s mate named McKendrick played softly on his flute, sitting along the bowsprit. In the empty vastness the sound seemed to carry with special purity, and it lent a magic to the engrossing rhythm of the waves.

  Maybe because of the music, or because of the sunny gentleness of the day—and certainly because of McEwan—Lenox decided to climb to the crow’s nest. The murder could wait half an hour.

  He checked with Mitchell, the officer on bridge watch, who shrugged and sent along a strong forecastleman to keep Lenox safe. The forecastlemen were the best seamen the ship had—by contrast the quarterdeckmen, for example, were of an advanced age that they no longer liked to go aloft, though Old Joe Coffey didn’t seem to mind—but evidently Mitchell could spare this one, a short, grinning, towheaded Swede named Andersen. He spoke in a rudimentary dialect of English that was almost wholly naval in origin, and therefore shockingly explicit. His stock of obscenities he seemed to view as ordinary, even courteous, and the rest of the crew found Andersen too funny to disabuse him of that impression.

  “Fucking top, here you going!” he said cheerfully, then for the sake of decorum added, “Sir!”

  Lenox felt a fool for it, after McEwan’s performance, but in his heart he knew from the outset that the ascent was the hardest physical task he had ever essayed. More than once he felt himself slipping and thanked the Lord for the rope looped around his midsection.

  After twenty yards or so the muscles in his legs were quivering and tired, and his hands a raw red from clinging desperately to the rope. Andersen, maddeningly, flung himself about the rigging like a monkey, making comments that were supposed to be encouraging, and which after a while Lenox stopped answering.

  Don’t look down, he exhorted himself over and over, even though looking up was no treat, but after he had gone about halfway toward the crow’s nest he nonetheless made the mistake of glancing toward the deck.

  His stomach went heavy and hollow, all the air sucked out of his midsection.

  “We’d better go back down,” he said to Andersen.

  “You must attain the crow nest!” replied the Swede with unforgivable jollity.

  Lenox gulped and resumed the slow, arduous climb. As one went higher every small wavelet that slapped against the ship seemed greater, resonating through her timbers, until, when he was only twenty feet from the top, a gentle whitecap almost knocked him loose.

  “So close!” said Andersen, who was hanging upside down by his legs, evidently having been as inspired by Follow the Leader as Lenox had been.

  At last the crow’s nest seemed to be within his grasp. It was larger than he had expected, a wide circle of solid oak that could have fit six men snugly around, their legs dangling through the hole in the center. Lenox’s knuckles were white with the strength of his grip on the rope, until, almost reluctantly, he accepted Andersen’s boost through the center.

  “Who’s that?” a voice called out as Lenox fell in a lump into the corner of the crow’s nest, panting.

  The detective, not as young as he had once been, was trembling, sweat-soaked, and shaky; all he had wanted while aloft was a moment of peace. Instead he had found Evers, McEwan’s friend. The one who thought he was an albatross.

  Andersen’s cheerful face popped through the center of the crow’s nest. “Rest now, Mr. Parliament! I have brought you reward as well! From Mr. McEwan—he suspects where you need it.”

  To Lenox’s immense gratitude Andersen revealed that he had brought with them a small thermos, which proved to be full of hot, sweet tea, and a napkin wrapped around seven or eight gingerbread biscuits, studded with pieces of rock sugar. Jane had packed them.

  Gradually Lenox’s breath returned to a steady rate and his reddened face began to cool. When he had at least some of his composure back he looked at Evers.

  “Excuse my intrusion,” he said.

  “Not at all, sir,” said Evers, in a voice that seemed to contradict the graciousness of his words. “They said you was going to try to make it up here. I didn’t think it would happen.”

  “Why have you come up?”

  “No reason.” As he spoke Evers shifted his hands, and Lenox saw for the first time that he was trying to hide something in his lap, his knees drawn up to his chin.

  Lenox’s guard went up: was this the murderer? Evers was a large, strong man. Thank goodness for Andersen’s presence.

  “You’re not on watch?”

  “No, which it’s my time to myself.”

  “Do you come up here often?”

  “Fairly often, sir.” Again he said this last word with as muc
h insolence as he could muster. He shifted his hands again and something spilled out onto the bare wood of the crow’s nest. Lenox grabbed it just as it seemed to be pitching for the hole at the center.

  “Look here, that’s mine!” cried Evers.

  Lenox held up the object. It was a charcoal pencil, chunky, with black charcoal on one side and white on the other, for shading. “This?”

  “Yes!”

  “Are you a draughtsman?”

  “No,” said Evers, but this was plainly a lie; as he reached forward to grab the charcoal from Lenox it was easy to see an open sketchbook.

  “May I see?” Lenox asked.

  A battle took place in Evers’s face: pride and resentment fighting against each other. At last the pride won out, and with a great show of antipathy he handed Lenox the book.

  Lenox flipped through it. On almost every page was a different sketch of the same vista, at different times of day—the view from this high perch, sometimes with other masts and even people showing, sometimes with a horizon, and always the sun and clouds and water.

  “These are wonderful,” said Lenox.

  “Oh?” said Evers hoarsely.

  “You draw?” Andersen said.

  “No!” Evers roared, and snatched the book back.

  “Let me see it for myself, this view you draw,” said Lenox.

  He stood. The crow’s nest was high-walled enough that it had concealed the panorama it offered from him while he was sitting, but now as he rose he took it all in.

  It was one of the most miraculous moments of his life; he had known the pleasure of rest after exertion, and he had known the heartswell one gets from a sweeping view of the natural world in its beauty. He hadn’t known them in combination, however, and together they overwhelmed him. There was the distant deck, populated by miniatures of the men he knew; the masts of the ship, ahead and behind him; there were the cliffs of grayish clouds, and between them, breaking through now and then, the brilliant golden sun.

  For five, then ten minutes he gazed out upon the sea and the sky. Raindrops fell on his face. His spirit felt full.

  “I don’t blame you for drawing it,” he said at last, sitting down again. “Will you tell me how you came to start drawing?”

  Evers wanted to speak, it was plain, but couldn’t with Andersen there. He gulped, and then said, “Some other time, if you don’t mind, sir. I need to be on duty.”

  “Not for hours!” said the Swede cheerfully.

  “Bugger,” Evers muttered, and set off down through the hole in the crow’s nest and back down the rigging, his sketchbook in his teeth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  So absorbing had life on board been that Lenox had half forgotten the reason he was there at all. But it had been nearly a week now. They would make landfall in Egypt after only five or six more days, four if the wind was exceptionally kind.

  So that afternoon he went to his cabin and removed the papers Edmund had handed him at the Plymouth docks from their leather satchel. After coming down from the crow’s nest he had had a good lunch, of roasted chicken, peas, and potatoes, washed down with a half bottle of claret, and then he had slept for an hour or so, physically exhausted. Now he felt refreshed, his mind sharp. He was prepared to read his orders.

  There were three sheets of paper, each a mess of jumbled numbers and letters, none of them ever forming a word, much less a sentence. They had been written in cipher by a cryptographer working for the British government.

  Thankfully Lenox knew the key to the cipher. For his sake it was a simple one: the first thirteen letters of the alphabet corresponded to the second thirteen, so that the letter A in fact denoted the letter N, the letter B in fact denoted the letter O, and so on. Meanwhile the cardinal numbers one through thirteen corresponded to the first thirteen letters of the alphabet, so that a one denoted an A and a thirteen denoted an M. Numbers more than thirteen were used as line breaks or spaces. The first enciphered word of his brother’s letter—4-5-1-E—therefore translated in plain English into the word Dear.

  Edmund had told Lenox of this system and made him recite it back several times, until the older brother was satisfied that the younger brother would remember. Now Lenox made a key for himself and set about translating the first of the three documents, his brother’s letter. This took half an hour or so of lip-biting effort. In its translated version the letter read:

  Dear Charles,

  Two documents are enclosed with this letter. We have enciphered both, believing that it would draw attention to have enciphered only one. The first, marked Alpha in the upper right-hand corner, details your official responsibilities in Suez, and the second, marked Omega in the upper right-hand corner, your covert ones. It is a matter of the highest importance that you should destroy both this letter and the document marked Omega as soon as you have committed the simple details of Omega to your memory. Alpha you may keep, and not bother hiding—should the French find it and decipher it they would discover only your official itinerary, and it might command their attention for long enough to keep their eyes off of you.

  Please accept the pistol they offer you at the consulate; you should carry it as a precaution. Return home safely, please, and know me to be,

  Your affectionate and grateful brother,

  Edmund

  For all his life Lenox had kept files full of the letters he received, dating back to school days and the Lord Chesterfield missives his father sent to Harrow. Now, though, he dutifully shredded Edmund’s letter into pieces, did the same with his scrawled translation, and dropped the resultant confetti through his porthole and into the ocean. Now he had only the two letters from the prime minister’s office and his quickly drawn-up key on his desk.

  There would be time to look over his official activities, and at any rate the resident consulate would no doubt shepherd him through his duties. It was more urgent to memorize the details of his clandestine mission.

  Translation of the Omega document was more difficult than translation of the letter, because there were more proper names and it was therefore more difficult to guess words after the first few letters. An hour of labor earned him a terse set of directions.

  Mr. Lenox:

  - Your meeting will take place on May fifteenth at ten minutes before midnight, three days after you are scheduled to arrive. If the Lucy has not reached Port Said by the afternoon of the fifteenth, the meeting will be delayed exactly twenty-four hours.

  - Near your hotel is a club for the use of European gentlemen, known in English as Scheherazade’s. Arrive there early, preferably by an hour or so, and order a (nonalcoholic) drink. In the fourth room on the left is a small door. Behind it is a staircase leading to the establishment’s kitchen. Your meeting will take place in the kitchen. A diagram of exits from the kitchen and the Scheherazade are on the back of this sheet. Commit them to memory.

  - Your contact, whom you may call Monsieur Sournois, will be at the rear of the kitchen, which at this hour will be empty. He is over six foot, dark-haired, and missing the smallest finger of his left hand. He will say the following phrase to you in English: “The kitchen is always closed when one is hungriest.” To this you will respond: “There’s never a meal to be had in Port Said after ten.” He will then answer all of the questions your brother has instructed you to ask. He will not ask about payment; it has been arranged.

  - When your meeting is concluded, take the exit marked B in the diagram on the reverse of this page. The corridor outside of it will lead to the street. Return to your hotel. Write the answers Sournois gave you in cipher, without copying down names, dates, or figures. These you must commit to your memory. Should you be followed, fall in with other people and make your voice and presence conspicuous.

  - When you reach Port Said, the consular staff will greet your ship. In all matters other than your meeting accept their guidance.

  - Should anything go amiss, you must for your own safety immediately make your way to the consulate, and then with all po
ssible haste to your ship.

  - Destroy this document once you have memorized its contents.

  As he read this Lenox’s nerves began to tense. It had seemed simple in the warmth of his London library: go to Egypt and perform a variety of official functions, and while off duty receive information from a French spy. Now it seemed like a mission fraught with danger.

  Mingled with this new anxiety, however, was excitement. He was eager to arrive at their destination: Port Said, a city that lay at the north of the canal, near the top of the continent, just as the city of Suez lay at the canal’s southern point. He wondered what it would be like, and a series of images flashed through his mind: the nomadic Bedouins of the desert, almond-eyed women whose mouths were covered with veils, dancing in dimly lit dens, curved swords, camels, tin lanterns carved with Moslem symbols. All the stuff of boyhood books about the great Arabic world.

  It was impossible to know whether any of that still existed. Of course the canal had changed Africa drastically, permitting goods from the center of the continent to reach its northern edge, around Port Said, and then to be absorbed into the great trade currents of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. There would be Europeans crawling all over the city—a concern, now that he came to think of it, though thankfully he and Sournois both had legitimate business to conduct, from all Edmund had said.

  Now the implications of this document, the one in his hands, returned with full force to Lenox’s mind: conflict between the world’s two greatest nations, its two greatest navies, its two greatest armies. A war across the channel. It was within his power to help England, either by avoiding the war or by giving her a head start if the war was inevitable. A daunting thought.