A Burial at Sea

by Charles Finch

  “Has he? Is he well?”

  “Sedated and anxious, very anxious, muttering all manner of things, but beyond danger. Ah, poor Mr. Martin.”

  They all gazed down at the corpse for a moment, and then Tradescant exhaled, nodded, and left them alone.

  “Sir, what is your name?” Lenox said to the old steward, seated on the bed, still crying.

  “Four and thirty years I known him,” the man said, “since he were no more than a boy and pitched out as a midshipman. He took me off his father’s farm when he first hoisted his flag.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Slaton.”

  “Mr. Slaton, look around you. Do you see anything unusual?”

  The old man dried his eyes and scanned the large cabin, his eyes rolling over objects he must have tidied and orderered a thousand times out here upon the waves. “No.”

  “Was he acting strangely?” Lenox said. “The captain?”

  “He weren’t happy—the shot rolled, Mr. Halifax kilt—but he weren’t acting strange, neither.”

  “I suppose I must look over his cabin later, at greater leisure,” said Lenox. “Thank you.”

  He was surprised to hear a voice say “No.” It was Billings.

  “Mr. Billings?”

  “As you say, I am the captain of this ship now, and I don’t want Mr. Martin’s belongings disturbed and rooted through, as if he were a twopenny tramp dead of cold outside St. Paul’s Cathedral. He was a great man, and it will be his wife who goes through his things. You may look now, but after we leave here and Slaton cleans the blood”—at this the steward emitted a fresh sob—“we will seal this chamber.”

  Lenox looked to Carrow for help, but there was approval on the younger lieutenant’s face. “Very well,” he said. “We must be thorough then.”

  Tradescant appeared at the door, followed by two stout men with a stretcher. After Lenox had carefully walked around the body, inspecting the hands and the face of the dead captain, he permitted them to lift the corpse onto the stretcher and bear it away toward the surgery. Slaton hurried after them, as if he might still attend to his master’s orders even now. Lenox didn’t bother stopping the old man.

  When they had removed Halifax’s body there had been left behind an unbloodied spot on the desk, surrounded by dried blood. The same happened now, though on a rich blue carpet.

  Lying in the center of this Martin-shaped emptiness was a small, silvery object.

  “Not again,” said Billings, his voice still weak. “My watch, no doubt, or perhaps Mr. Carrow’s.”

  Lenox stooped and picked the objects up. “A silver tie chain,” he said, letting it run through his fingers. The chain was snapped. “Do you recognize it?”

  Both men stepped closer, and then, as if in unison, both nodded. “It’s Mitchell’s,” said Carrow. Billings nodded. “He wears it nearly every day.”

  Billings said, “Look on the reverse and you’ll find his initials.”

  Lenox looked, and saw that Billings was correct. He sighed. What, now, could this mean? The chain was broken: had Martin broken it in the struggle and dropped it as he died? It would be important to discover, from Tradescant, whether Martin had fought back.

  Lenox turned and scanned the room with his eyes again, restless for some clue.

  His gaze alighted on a piece of paper that stood in a triangle on Martin’s desk.

  “What is that?” he said.

  “What?” Carrow asked.

  “That piece of paper.” Lenox strode over and picked it up. His heart went into his throat; there was a finger-smudge of blood on the outside. He showed it to the two officers silently.

  Their eyes widened. “Shall I look at it?” said Billings. “As captain?”

  “It will say the same thing no matter which of us reads it,” said Lenox. “Here, we may all look it over together.”

  The paper, of very coarse stock—the sort that left one’s fingers dark—was folded in half, and on the outside at any rate had no markings other than the blood. Lenox flipped it open and all three men looked on the message within at once.

  The Lu is ares. Beware.

  There was a long moment of disturbed silence.

  “It means ‘ours’ of course,” said Carrow at last.

  “And the ‘Lu’ is what men call the Lucy,” Billings added.

  “Christ,” Lenox said. “I suppose the mutiny is serious.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “I ought to go above deck,” said Billings. “We must meet this evening to confirm the news, but until then I must be seen. Mr. Carrow, when Mr. Lenox no longer requires your assistance, please pass out the word to your mess captains that we shall gather upon the stroke of six.”

  “Yes, Captain,” said Carrow.

  When these two men were alone in the room, blood not far from them on the carpet, Carrow let out a tremendous exhale. Lenox looked at him inquisitively. “Does something trouble you?”

  “Only that it is the worst situation I have ever experienced afloat, and that I fear for our lives every moment.”

  “Yes.”

  Carrow sat at Martin’s desk, his habitual frown etched on his face, and took a bag of tobacco from his jacket sleeve. “Would you like to fill your pipe?” he asked. “It’s the worst, blackest sort of shag—only stuff I smoke.”

  “No, I thank you.”

  “I’m amazed you don’t need it, to steady yourself.”

  Lenox paced toward a porthole. “You have found both bodies, Mr. Carrow.”

  “So I have. The first in the company of your nephew, the second not fifteen feet from the captain’s galley, where Mr. Slaton was putting tea together. What of it?”

  “Mr. Slaton admitted you?”

  “No.”

  “Then he had no way of knowing how long you had been in here.”

  To Lenox’s surprise, Carrow laughed. “That’s true enough, sir. But if you think I killed either of these men, you’re a bigger fool than I took you for.”

  “You understand that everyone on board the Lucy is a suspect.”

  “Yes. But I have the good fortune of knowing, infallibly, that I did not murder Faxxie, nor Captain Martin.” He lit his pipe. “My god,” he muttered, less constrained than Lenox had ever seen him. “Both of them dead. Think of it. I shudder to imagine the newspapers. The navy scarcely needs the negative exposure.”

  “Yes.”

  Carrow puffed on his pipe, and blew the smoke through an open porthole. It was a bright, sparkling day now, light shimmering on the quick water. “The worst of it is the manner of the death. The brutality.”

  It was this that had occupied Lenox’s mind, too. “If mutiny is the motive for these murders, I suppose such brutality sends a message. Yet neither man was bludgeoned, which is the sort of death one sees committed in the heat of anger most often.”

  “No.”

  Lenox paused, then spoke. “Who do you think murdered them, Mr. Carrow?”

  “I wish I could say.”

  “Do you know anything more than you’ve told me?”

  “A great deal more, I don’t doubt. Sadly, I don’t know what it is.” He rose. “If you don’t need me, the ship is badly shorthanded of officers now. I’ll go.”

  “As you wish.”

  But Carrow didn’t move. “Mr. Lenox?”

  “Yes?”

  “The captain—Captain Billings—wants this room sealed. We should leave.”

  “Ridiculous. I need ten minutes here.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand naval conduct, sir, but I would ask you to leave.”

  Unhappily, Lenox followed Carrow out of the room, glancing back once, long enough to see that half-empty bottle of whisky that still stood on Martin’s desk. With a pang in his heart he thought of the warm, comradely spirit that he had felt upon the American ship—and felt half a traitor for wishing himself in that atmosphere again, rather than this one.

  He went on deck now, to think for a moment before he v
isited Tradescant in the surgery. He had the quarterdeck to himself. From it he could observe the ship’s activity, and it was clear to him word had spread. Men were murmuring to each other as they passed; there was a tension, a tangible anxiety, that had flooded the decks.

  It reminded him that he had left Teddy, anxious himself, down below deck, and when he remembered Lenox went down.

  Teddy was no longer in the cabin. Lenox flew to the gun room and to his immense relief found the boy there, whispering with his friends.

  Pimples stood up and smiled wanly. “Is he really gone?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’m afraid he is.”

  “It’s the worst damned thing I’ve ever heard,” Cresswell said with an ardent bark to his voice. “Hanging is too good for the bastard who did it.”

  “Will you find him, Uncle?” said Teddy.

  “We’re not far now,” said Lenox. “Please excuse me.”

  They weren’t far—and yet he couldn’t imagine that they were close, either. Which of these men was capable of it? Billings? Carrow? Mitchell? Lee? Perhaps the surgeon, Tradescant—though Lenox wouldn’t believe that—or the bitter purser, Pettegree? One of the stewards, perhaps Butterworth? One of the men, bent on mutiny? A midshipman, even. Anything was possible. Which was what made it such a hopeless muddle.

  Yet he felt his brain closing in on the answer. If he could just take his eye off of the question, it would come to him. He had answered Teddy honestly. It wasn’t far now, the answer to the question of who was responsible for these fearful killings.

  The surgery, often one of the dimmest parts of the ship, was brilliant now with a half-dozen hanging lanterns. Lenox saw their light before he turned into the room and saw Martin’s corpse, laid out on the table where Halifax’s had been.

  “Mr. Lenox,” said the surgeon coolly, looking to the doorway, “please, come in.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Tradescant. What have you found?”

  “Nothing, yet, I’m afraid. Or rather, I have discovered the means of death, but there was no great mystery to that, sadly.”

  “Not the same as the last?”

  “No. Halifax was stabbed with a penknife, but the captain has been throttled with a thin string, and then sliced open from navel to sternum, and the skin pulled back to reveal a rough rectangle.”

  “Have you looked for … souvenirs?” This word Lenox said with a grimace.

  “Among the organs, none, and I have looked very thoroughly.”

  “As a very great favor to me, might you look once more?”

  “Of course.”

  The body was scrubbed of blood and looked as clean as it conceivably could, under the circumstances. “Is there anything else? Any odor?”

  “As before, an odor of whisky is on the belly.”

  “Have you looked at his hands? Did he fight?”

  Tradescant turned over the hand closest to him and motioned for his assistant to turn the other, so that the palms were faced down toward the table. He leaned over and examined them with a magnifying glass that hung from a gold chain on his neck. But it was an unnecessarily methodical act; Lenox could see with his naked eyes that only old scars were on the back of the captain’s hands.

  “These white lines are not new, of course,” said Tradescant, still leaned over. “I see nothing under the fingernails. No, I don’t think he fought.”

  “It was a surprise again, then,” said Lenox, and felt his brain quickening. “And someone he would have admitted to his cabin, in all likelihood, without scruple—an officer.”

  “A bluejacket might have entered without Captain Martin raising his fists.”

  “Or his voice? I heard no report of shouting from Mr. Slaton.”

  The steward, in the corner, shook his old head. “No shouting.”

  “Call it inconclusive, but leading,” said Lenox. “Like everything else in this damnable business.”

  “A captain murdered on his own vessel,” said Tradescant, shaking his head. “It’s hard to know what to believe in.”

  “And mutiny in the bargain,” said Lenox.

  “Spare my heart and keep that word quiet, Mr. Lenox,” said the surgeon, and with careful fingers shut Jacob Martin’s eyes forever.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  A mood of claustrophobia grew now. Men eyed each other as they passed on deck; officers began to snap out their orders more sharply.

  The ship would reach Egypt in three or perhaps four days and when she did, no doubt some pressure valve would release, and the tension of this cursed voyage would dissipate. In the meantime they were in open water with a murderer, and possibly with a mutinous gang of sailors.

  “The Lu is ares. Beware.” That was what the note had said. Lenox wondered whether it was genuine. “Or it might be a red herring,” he whispered as he walked the quarterdeck again. His mind flitted to the term’s hunting origins, the kennel master at Lenox House training the hounds with pieces of red herring, trying to throw them off the scent.

  After all, why would a mutiny declare itself in that way? And the misspelling of the word ours—mightn’t it be a bit convenient, a bit too directly proletarian?

  Weighed against that, however, were the murders, the rolled shot, the guardedness in the eyes of the men on the main deck. Martin had restored the ship’s morale when he gave out a double ration of grog and announced the game of Follow the Leader, but it took only one madman, maybe two, to persuade half the sailors on board that a mutiny might be just and proper.

  Lenox paced the quarterdeck for a long time, until at last McEwan came to fetch him for some food. He choked down a sandwich of butter and ham, and then made a list for his own benefit of all the case’s permutations and potentialities. This took an hour or more, and left him both hopeless and somewhere, in the back of his mind, still convinced that comprehension was close.

  At six, the men of the Lucy gathered again, and Billings, now the acting captain, watched them assemble.

  Pettegree stood next to Lenox on the quarterdeck. He was pale. “What a dreadful day for the navy,” he said. “Unthinkable.”

  “The murder? The mutiny?”

  “Both. And poor Mr. Billings—the first to admit he’s not ready to be a captain. Halifax would have been better fit to handle her, I think. So Martin thought, too.”

  “When the men are restless, do you worry for your stores?”

  “I do—and my neck, more importantly. Nobody likes a purser. Everyone suspects the purser and the purser’s mate are shorting him on beer or grog or beef or pease or any sort of thing. Rope.”

  “I would never have thought them capable of mutiny.”

  “And yet here we are. Lord, to have Martin back for three days, to bring us through this—I would offer a king’s ransom.”

  And indeed, Billings looked flushed and anxious when he spoke. But he spoke handsomely.

  “As you all now know, your captain, Captain Martin, is dead. Murdered, by the same cowardly scoundrel who slew Mr. Halifax.”

  A loud chatter broke out, most of it, or so it seemed to Lenox, sounding of outrage.

  “There will be time for a eulogy, but I will say now one thing: Jacob Martin was the soul of the navy, the reason she is the greatest fighting force in mankind’s history. He was committed, adventurous, and courageous. A leader of men. His death should have been at battle, or long after his hair had grown white and he had given up the sea. His death was unworthy of his life. Though I shall be your captain, temporarily, no man could step into Captain Martin’s place—not Nelson himself—and command the Lucy as well as he did, so that she was the finest ship in Her Majesty’s navy.”

  There was a ragged cheer.

  “And so I vow that whoever did this shall answer to me—shall answer to all of us—and shall be separated from his head, and that right quick.”

  There was a louder, more committed cheer now, and Billings shook hands with all the officers, accepting their solemn congratulations on his words.

  Lieutenant Lee, Le
nox noticed, was the exception.

  Back in his cabin, Lenox sent McEwan for Teddy Lenox in the gun room. The lad showed up in what looked like a hastily donned uniform.

  “Yes, Uncle Charles? I’m on duty in the first watch,” he said, “and must be on deck well before according to Mr. Mitchell.”

  “Why?”

  “Morale.”

  “I see. Teddy, I want you to be safe. Could you keep this in the small pocket in your sleeve, perhaps?”

  Lenox produced a small, stout knife with an ebony handle and a sharp blade.

  “Won’t I cut myself?”

  “No—it has a corked tip, look. Try to stay among other people, and decline any invitations to have conference alone with anyone.”

  “Even Cresswell, or Pimples?”

  “Even them, I’m afraid. You must exercise great caution until we discover the murderer. Your father would never forgive me if I let anything befall you.”

  “Yes, Uncle Charles.”

  Lenox took his supper in his cabin that evening, alone. There was a gathering in the wardroom but he wanted no part of it, preferring to be alone with his thoughts. He pored over the list he had written out and tried to find the way in, the door the murderer had left cracked rather than locking. But it was futile. He wrote a letter to Jane, added it to the pile sitting in his toast rack, and fell into an unhappy sleep.

  The next morning was cruelly beautiful, the sun-dappled water clear and calm, the wind light but steady enough to push the ship along at a fair three or four knots.

  He went to see Billings, the acting captain, who was sitting in his own old cabin, with Butterworth’s hammock slung up before the door.

  “Have you not thought to move into the captain’s cabin?” said Lenox.

  “It would be ill-mannered and impudent, I think.”

  “Yet you must assume Mr. Martin’s authority.”

  “I find myself exceedingly harried by responsibility, in fact, Mr. Lenox. May we come to the point?”

  “I wonder if you would reconsider letting me look at the cabin under discussion.”