A Burial at Sea

by Charles Finch

  “The Queen!”

  Martin stood up then, and praised Collier and his ship, her taut rigging and shipshape sails, and then echoed Collier’s delight in the friendship between their nations.

  “And now,” Collier said, when the toasts were all delivered, “if you can stay a little while longer we have some excellent brandy—American, but good, I promise you—and we would welcome your company for as long as you please to drink it with us.”

  It was very late at night indeed—nearly morning—when the Bumblebee readied herself for her short voyage back to the Lucy. Alice Cresswell and Teddy Lenox for their part were shamefully drunk, and the officers, roughly but with a hint of indulgence, piled them into the bottom of the boat; then all of them, including Lenox, turned back to wave goodbye to the Americans as the rowers began to pull. The men of the Constellation, among them her own officers, were lined along the rail of the ship, waving back and shouting messages of goodwill, of good sailing, and of good luck.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Though it was abominably late and he was slightly the worse for drink, when Lenox returned to his cabin he found that he didn’t feel like falling straight into bed. He went to his desk and lit a candle there.

  “Sir?” said McEwan groggily, from the other side of the door. “D’you need anything?”

  “No, no, thank you,” said Lenox.

  “G’night, sir. Oh! But the Americans, how were they?”

  “Most friendly.”

  “Did they try to boast about the old wars, 1812 and that?”

  “Not at all.”

  “My old granddad fought them then. He was sore about it still, up till he died. Said they were up-jumped ruffians, the Americans.”

  “On the contrary, I found them most civilized.”

  “Well, and perhaps they grown up, in all this time.”

  “Perhaps. Good night, McEwan.”

  “G’night, sir.”

  Lenox poured himself a glass of wine and rocked back in his chair, looking out through his porthole. The scent of the still sea blew lightly into the cabin, and above it the sky had just begun to lighten from black to pale purple. In the half-light there was a melancholy to the lightless gray of the water, a solitude in it, and he felt something stir inside him: a feeling that reminded him again of homesickness.

  He thought of Jane, sitting on her rose-colored sofa, writing letters at her morning desk, moving through the house, setting small things aright. How did these men tolerate lives at sea, always abroad, always a thousand miles from home! But then, perhaps they weren’t as happy by their hearths as he was by his.

  It had been only a week after Edmund had asked Charles to go to Egypt that Jane had begun to act strangely. For two days she had spoken very little and spent much time closeted with her close friend the Duchess of Marchmain—Duch, for short—and refusing all invitations.

  Lenox had too much delicacy to ask her what was the matter, but he had gone and sat with her at unusual times, running home during breaks from Parliament, hoping to invite her confidence.

  It was on the third day that he finally received it. He had been reading on the sofa by the fire—there was still a winter chill in the air, halfway through March—and eating an edge of toast, when Jane spoke.

  “Tell me,” she said, “how old was your mother when you were born?”

  He put his book facedown beside him. “Nearly twenty-four, I think.”

  “Twenty-one when Edmund was born, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Jane smiled. “I wish she had lived longer. She was such a kind woman.”

  “Yes,” he said, and felt a lump in his throat. It was something he tried never to think about.

  “I’m fearfully old,” she said.

  “You’re not!”

  “I am, I am. Too old to be a mother.”

  Since their marriage Lenox had been hoping that she might consent to have a child with him, and now with a start he realized that perhaps the opportunity was being taken from him. “McConnell and every other doctor you’ve seen have told you you’re not,” he said.

  She laughed, a kind of choked laugh. “I suppose they were right!”

  He stood up. “Jane?”

  “I’m going to have a child, anyhow,” she said, and burst into tears.

  What had he felt in that moment? It was impossible to describe the jumble inside him: pride mixed up with fear mixed up with a great surge of excitement mixed up with a million questions mixed up with concern for his wife mixed up with … with everything, anything a human could feel.

  “My goodness,” was all he said. His hands were in his pockets and he rocked back on his feet, staring at a spot on the ground.

  “Is that what you have to say?”

  His face broke into a great grin, and he went and took her by the hands. “No. I have much more to say. Only I don’t know where to begin. At first I thought I would thank you for marrying me, which still surprises me every day, though it happened years ago, and then I thought I would say how happy I felt, but you were crying. So I thought I would stand there and be silent.”

  She had stopped crying, but her face was still wet with tears. “Oh, Charles,” she said.

  “When did you know?”

  “I’ve suspected it for some while, but I went to the doctor with Duch yesterday. He confirmed it.”

  Lenox frowned. “The doctor, there’s a point. Do you have the best man? McConnell knows all of them in Harley Street—we’ll ask him—and of course we must be sure to speak—”

  “No, no—this habit you have of solving problems that don’t exist! I have an excellent doctor. Toto used him too.”

  Lenox sat down beside her and put an arm around her shoulder. In a quick voice he said, “You have made me happy beyond measure, Jane—really, you have.”

  She tilted her head up and kissed his cheek then. “I’m so relieved to tell you.”

  “Were you anxious?”

  “I don’t know, quite. My head was all in a muddle.”

  And then she did something that Lenox could almost feel in his cabin, so far from London: she took his hand and put it in hers, and they sat, companionably silent for the most part, occasionally bursting into little exchanges about this or that—which room would the nursery be! If it were a boy he must be put down for Harrow immediately!—until deep in the morning.

  There was a feeling of nervous elation bound up in having so much happiness, he had found. Every time he thought of his child, growing strong within Jane, he had a fizzy feeling in his head and had to remind himself to behave normally, not to run around telling strangers.

  Outside of his cabin the sky was pale white now, and soon, he knew, it would flash into goldenness. Really he must rest.

  But not for twenty minutes, he decided; he would write his wife first, and tell her how much he missed her, and how very much he loved her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Butterworth knows something, the note from Evers had said.

  Lenox woke up late the next morning with a foggy head, but the phrase popped straight into his thoughts. As he ate breakfast and sipped his coffee, he considered the little he knew of Billings’s valet. Butterworth was jaundiced yellow, some harmless seafarer’s disease, Billings had mentioned, and too tall by several inches for the low ceilings on board a ship, which meant he always seemed slightly stooped.

  Billings himself was in the wardroom, writing a letter, when Lenox put his head out. Seated alongside him was Mitchell, who was whittling down a piece of light-colored spruce into what appeared to be a finely detailed model of the Lucy.

  It was a minor piece of information that Lenox registered almost automatically: Mitchell must be used to having a knife in his hands …

  “D’you know,” the detective said in a conversational tone, “I almost feel guilty, asking McEwan to fetch me more coffee. He possesses such surpassing grace amidships that it seems he ought to be there.”

  Billings looked up, smiling; Mi
tchell looked up too, but without the smile. “Oh, he’s landed where he wants to be,” said Billings. “It’s no bad job.”

  “Have you had your own stewards long? How were they chosen?”

  “Butterworth came to sea with me—my father’s servant.”

  “He must be trustworthy, in that case.”

  “Oh, very. Mitchell, did your chap come along with you?”

  “He and I have been together on several voyages now, but all on the Lucy,” said Mitchell, still whittling. “We met when I was a midshipman in the Challenger, and when I had my step up I brought him along as my steward. Excellent fellow.”

  “It’s common, then, for a steward to follow an officer from assignment to assignment?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Mitchell. “In fact many of them act as butlers when their gentlemen are ashore. A bit rough, as butlers go, but nobody can keep a house clean like a steward.”

  “It’s true that I have been amazed at the amount of time McEwan spends tidying.”

  For the first time in their acquaintance, Mitchell smiled at him, albeit thinly. “Such is life afloat, Mr. Lenox.”

  Billings took a last mouthful of egg and stood up. “I think I’ll take a turn on the quarterdeck,” he said. “Last night’s wine has given me a morning head, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Mitchell.

  “Mr. Lenox?” Billings asked.

  “I’ll stay here, if it’s all the same to you.”

  After they had gone Lenox rose and went to the closed door behind which lay Billings’s cabin, and the tiny nook where Butterworth slept. He knocked on the door, but nobody answered. As he began to push it open, a heavy voice behind him said, “Oy! Who’s that?”

  Lenox turned. It was Butterworth himself. “Just the man I was looking for.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. I have a few questions for you.”

  “About what?” said Butterworth, his face suspicious.

  “About Lieutenant Halifax.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was curious where you were during the middle of the night, when Halifax died.”

  “I was fast asleep, leastways until Mr. Carrow came down to fetch my master.”

  “You didn’t leave this cabin?”

  “Not after supper, no.”

  “Did Mr. Billings?”

  “No! And if you’re implying—if you think—”

  Lenox waved a hand. “Save your outrage, please. I only wanted to know if one of you might have seen something.”

  Indignantly, Butterworth said, “Which and if we had, don’t you think we would have told?”

  “Sometimes we may see things without seeing them.”

  “I don’t understand riddles, Mr. Lennots, and I won’t answer ’em.”

  “Tell me this, anyway—on the day of the voyage, did you notice anything peculiar?”

  “No,” said Butterworth stoutly.

  “Nothing?”

  “Maybe excepting yourself.”

  “You’re dangerously close to rudeness, Mr. Butterworth.”

  Butterworth rolled his eyes, and then with a sullen bow of his head, said, “Apology.”

  McEwan came out into the wardroom, munching on what looked as if it might be the toast Lenox had left uneaten on his plate, and, though it didn’t sound very good, whistling through the crumbs.

  “Will you give us a moment?” said Lenox to him.

  “Oh! Sorry, sir. I was coming to ask permission to polish your toast rack, the one with the letters in it?” Then he added, whispering, “It’s silver.”

  “Yes, go on,” said Lenox. “But go!”

  “I’m vanished, I’m positively vanished already, sir,” said McEwan, and as proof put a finger up to his crumb-covered lips.

  When they were alone again, Butterworth said, “If that will be all—”

  “No, it won’t. I asked you if you saw anything unusual on the day before Mr. Halifax was murdered. You say you didn’t. I ask you to consider again—did you see anyone unusual around Mr. Billings’s cabin? Anyone who might have stolen something from your master?”

  Butterworth looked uneasy now, and Lenox saw he had struck a nerve. “No,” was all the man said, however.

  “You did—I can see it on your face. Who was in Lieutenant Billings’s cabin?”

  “Nobody, sir.”

  “It’s ‘sir’ now, is it? You must tell me—a man is dead.”

  “But it doesn’t mean anything!” said Butterworth.

  “What doesn’t?”

  The steward looked at Lenox for a long moment and then relented. “The captain. He insisted on looking through all the cabins in the wardroom on his own, the day of the trip.”

  “The captain did? Is that usual?”

  Butterworth shook his head. “No.”

  “Did he give a reason?”

  “He’s the captain. He don’t need no reason. But he wouldn’t have killed Halifax—it’s not possible.” This came out in a low moan. “Please, though, you mustn’t think he did anything! Mr. Billings idolizes him.”

  “Be calm—I agree with you. It’s not possible. You may go, now—thank you.”

  Lenox had told an outright lie. It was certainly possible that Martin had killed Halifax. First the whisky, and now the plain opportunity to have stolen both Carrow’s medallion and Billings’s pocketknife. The baffling absence of motive was all that held Lenox back from fully believing that Martin was the murderer.

  Soon it was noon, and the daily ritual took place again, Lenox on the gleaming, swabbed, and holystoned quarterdeck to observe it. The midshipman called Pimples, under the supervision of Lee and Martin, took a sighting of the sun.

  “Our latitude is thirty-five degrees north, and our longitude is six degrees west,” he said.

  “You’ll see African soil soon, then,” Lee answered. “We’re close to passing through the strait between Morocco and Spain.”

  All hands were piped to the midday meal, then, and the naval schedule continued apace.

  It was two hours later that this routine was interrupted by the unthinkable.

  It was Teddy Lenox who rushed to his uncle’s cabin, his face pale and his breath short. “It’s happened again!” he said. “Again!”

  Lenox’s stomach fell. “Another murder?”

  “Yes!”

  “Who? Was it another lieutenant?”

  Teddy could barely speak, but he managed to croak it out. “No,” he said, “the captain. Captain Martin is dead.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  There was a tremendous lurch somewhere deep in Lenox’s spirit. I failed, he thought to himself. What business did I have trying to play detective again? The contrapuntal voice that rose in his mind—Who else was there to do it?—he smothered quickly.

  “Where?”

  “In his cabin.”

  “What does the body—are the wounds the same?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Lieutenant Carrow.”

  “I must go to the body.”

  Lenox rose, and then, about to leave in a rush, stopped himself and looked his nephew in the eye.

  He saw a frightened boy.

  “Teddy, you’ll be safe, I swear,” he said.

  “Who’s doing this, Uncle Charles?”

  “I don’t know. But it doesn’t mean you’re in danger, or that I am.”

  “I remember when I was at school I used to tell my friends about my uncle, the great detective.”

  Lenox knew the boy wasn’t trying to be hurtful. “Listen, stay here in my cabin, would you? If you like, have one of those biscuits. I’ll come back in a few moments.”

  Obediently, Teddy sat at Lenox’s desk.

  The member of Parliament, feeling every one of his forty-two years, sprinted in the direction of Martin’s cabin. Every face he saw along the way was a study in shock and fear. Halifax’s death, terrible though it might have been, belonged to a lesser order of mag
nitude than Martin’s. He had been a captain in Her Majesty’s navy, a person of mammoth authority and responsibility, at times of crisis nearer a father than an officer to many of the bluejackets.

  In Martin’s cabin were four men: Billings, who Lenox realized with a shock must be the acting captain, Carrow, the discoverer of the body, Tradescant, and Martin’s ancient, white-haired steward, who was seated on the edge of his dead master’s bed, weeping.

  And a fifth man was also present, of course, when Lenox arrived. Martin himself. As Lenox had dreaded, the captain’s abdomen was butterflied open. The corpse was on its back, and the incisions upon it looked just as those upon Halifax had. It was a horrid, bloody mess. Around the neck he observed a red abrasion, a sign perhaps that Martin, unlike Halifax, had been garroted. His eyes were glassy and depthless. Lenox had to take a deep breath to steady his nerves.

  Billings was the first to speak. He was pale, his voice tremulous. “A madman is loose on board our ship,” he said.

  Lenox drew up to his full height. “You are the captain now, Mr. Billings. You must find the strength to face that.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are carrying a representative of Her Majesty’s government to foreign soil. That is more important than any … any fear you might feel.”

  “Yes,” said Billings. “But, what shall we do?”

  “First I must look over the body. Mr. Tradescant?”

  “Yes?”

  “Your assistants should come with a stretcher, that we may lay out Mr. Martin on the same table we did Mr. Halifax. Will you fetch them, or send someone to?”

  “I will,” said Carrow.

  “No, I’d like a word with you,” said Lenox. “Mr. Tradescant?”

  “I’m on my way.” He paused, looking old and bewildered. “It had been such a good day, too, my one long-term patient awoken.”