The Mary Celeste

by Brian Freemantle

Flood sighed, exasperated by the man’s pedantic presentation, but he suppressed the urge to hurry him.

  ‘Three spots I had obtained from the deck were large enough to hang upon threads before suspending them in tubes containing a quantity of distilled water. Two others were so small that I had to put them into filtering bags before commencing the maceration –’

  ‘How long did it take?’ demanded Flood, anticipating the result.

  Again there was a frown from the chemist at the other man’s urgency.

  ‘The initial maceration was continued for two and a quarter hours,’ he said. ‘At the end of that time, the distilled water was as clear and bright as it had been at the commencment of the experiment.’

  The Attorney-General tilted his head to one side in one of his bird-like positions, as if it were difficult to understand what the other man was saying.

  ‘Notwithstanding that, I left things as they were until the following day, but even at the end of twenty-four hours there was still no discoloration of the water. I then heated the exhibits by spirit lamp, but still there was no cloudy aspect forthcoming –’

  ‘Are you telling me …?’

  ‘I then concluded that particular experiment, believing it to be negative,’ said the doctor, refusing the interruption. ‘I then put beneath the microscope those particles I had attempted to macerate in filtering bags. I identified carbonate of iron and a vegetable substance –’

  ‘I’m a layman, doctor. What is that?’

  ‘Rust,’ said Patron simply. ‘And wood fibres.’

  ‘The sword,’ said Flood urgently. ‘What about the sword?’

  Patron nodded. ‘About the middle and rear part of the blade were stains of a more suspicious character,’ he resumed. ‘Although small and superficial, their aspect was reddish and in some parts brilliant. My first impression was that they were unquestionably bloodstains.’

  Missing the qualification, Flood began nodding, sharp, abrupt movements.

  ‘I subjected them to the same maceration as I had attempted with the earlier experiments, once again submitting them to heat when no discoloration of the liquid took place. There was still no clouding under conditions of heat. Under a microscope, I identified an imperfectly crystallised substance resembling citrate of iron. Three other stains were tested with hydrochloric acid and after a perceptible effervescence a yellow stain was produced of chloride of iron –’

  The Attorney-General jerked up from the desk no longer able to contain his patience.

  ‘The examination was to prove bloodstaining, doctor,’ he said. ‘What about the blood?’

  Dr Patron stared up, aware for the first time that the other man had not properly assimilated what he was saying.

  ‘There was no blood,’ he said.

  The Attorney-General had started to walk around from the desk, towards a window. Now he stopped, frowning back at the analyst:

  ‘No blood?’

  ‘Not present in any of the experiments I conducted from the material I took from the vessel. And had any of that spotting from the deck or the stains to the sword been blood, it would have registered during the maceration.’

  ‘But it must be blood,’ insisted Flood, refusing the other man’s word.

  ‘Rust,’ Dr Patron corrected him.

  ‘What other tests did you carry out?’ persisted Flood.

  ‘I did not consider that any more were necessary. Blood would have registered had it been present during my examination.’

  ‘What about solvents?’

  ‘I could have attempted a reaction from solvents,’ conceded the analyst. ‘But as I have said, I did not consider it necessary.’

  ‘But I consider it necessary,’ said Hood, making an effort to control his temper. ‘I would like you to return to your laboratory and subject those exhibits to further analysis.’

  ‘That isn’t possible,’ said Patron uncomfortably.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Flood.

  ‘I have disposed of the samples,’ said Patron. Aware of the colour reaching the Attorney-General’s face, he hurried on: ‘It was a failed experiment, producing nothing. I did not imagine you would want them preserved … there was no point –’

  ‘You destroyed them!’

  Flood shouted in his outrage.

  ‘They had no usefulness,’ Patron tried, awkwardly.

  ‘They were court exhibits, Dr Patron. Made so by their being handed to you by a duly sworn official of the court. You’ve destroyed court evidence. Worse, you’d destroyed it before carrying out properly the task with which you were entrusted.’

  ‘I believe I fulfilled every function with which I was charged,’ said Patron defiantly. ‘There was no blood.’

  Many years before, soon after he had arrived in the colony, Flood had climbed with some other young men to the very tip of the Peak and then they had all stood aloft to stare into Spain to their left and out across the Mediterranean to their right. For the first time he had learned that he suffered from vertigo: ever since, by dosing his eyes, Flood had been able to recall that stomach-emptying sensation of helplessness at the conviction that he was going to topple thousands of feet into the water below. It had taken his companions nearly five hours, at times blindfolding him, to bring him safely down. Flood closed his eyes now, without calling the incident to mind, and the impression of dropping into space was very real. He suddenly realised that there were no further samples for another analysis. Anxious to provide Dr Patron with every available particle, he had ensured that everything suspicious had been scraped from the deck during their visits. And now the confounded man had thrown it all away.

  ‘Are you aware, Dr Patron, that because of your crass incompetence you have endangered the proving of an undoubted crime?’ he said, his voice jagged in his rage.

  ‘I do not accept incompetence,’ said Patron, in matching anger. ‘I carried out the accepted tests upon the material with which I was supplied and reached a negative finding.’

  ‘Didn’t it occur to you that I might seek a second opinion?’

  ‘There would have been little point. The conclusion would have been that which I reached.’

  ‘You compound your incompetence by arrogance!’ said Flood, voice loud again. ‘How can you say what someone else might have found using methods different from those which you chose to employ?’

  ‘I am confident of my report,’ insisted Patron, pointing to the paper which lay as he had put it upon the Attorney-General’s desk.

  The complete awareness of how the analyst had damaged the case he was attempting to pursue swept through the Attorney-General. So, too, did the feeling of impotence at his inability to correct it.

  ‘I could have you arraigned before the enquiry to answer for this,’ he said vehemently. But he wouldn’t take such a course, he accepted, even as he made the threat. Because it would provide an escape route for all those whose guilt he now had to prove by other methods.

  ‘I will not be threatened,’ said the other man. ‘I carried out the task entrusted to me to the best of my ability. It is not my fault it failed to register positively.’

  ‘It is precisely your fault, Dr Patron,’ said Flood.

  ‘This is the very first occasion upon which my professional ability has been challenged,’ said Patron.

  And it would be the last, determined Flood. He would never again employ Patron upon any experiment. And he’d make damned sure that few others did, either.

  Anxious now to end the encounter, Patron took a diary from his briefcase, opening it officiously.

  ‘I’d appreciate some indication of when you’d like me to appear,’ he said stiffly.

  Flood frowned at him. ‘What?’

  ‘A date for me to give evidence at the enquiry.’

  Flood experienced another surge of rage, this time at the thought of how eagerly the other lawyers would seize and twist the analyst’s evidence.

  ‘I am undecided if that will be necessary, in view of the negative natu
re of the results,’ said Flood. Seeing the look of surprise upon the man’s face, he added heavily: ‘I would imagine that questions about the missing exhibits might become a little invidious.’

  ‘I devoted a great deal of time and attention to the tests, believing them to be important,’ said Patron.

  ‘A pity that even more time was not invested,’ said Flood. He moved from his desk, as anxious as the doctor to end the interview. The man was an irritating fool.

  The pretence of civility was difficult, but Flood personally accompanied the analyst to the door. A fresh thought halted him just inside: the advantage to the other advocates, if they became aware of the inconclusive evidence. He seized Patron’s arm:

  ‘You appreciate, of course, that even though it has not been officially produced, your report remains a court document, commissioned as it was by me?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said the man doubtfully.

  ‘It’s contents are sub judice, to be discussed with no one,’ said the Attorney-General.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘In fact, it could be construed as a punishable offence to reveal your findings unless so permitted by the judge.’

  ‘I see,’ said the doctor.

  ‘To no one,’ emphasised the Attorney-General.

  ‘No one,’ agreed Dr Patron.

  Flood stood at the door, watching the man enter his carriage, then turned back into the house. Unthinkingly, he walked back to the verandah and sat where he had done before the man’s arrival, gazing out over the bay.

  Again he was swept by the nauseous sensation of falling into emptiness. He clenched his hands together, fighting against the feeling. On the Peak all those years ago there had been friends aware of his difficulty. This time he had no one to guide him back to safety.

  Benjamin Briggs was not an unemotional man: in the privacy of their bedroom or night cabin, Sarah found him a considerate but still passionate lover. In his public conduct, however, he was a self-contained, very controlled man. It was not an attitude of shyness. Nor did it come from a lack of outspokenness. The very opposite, in fact. He simply regarded the charades in which people frequently indulged to convey their moods to be unnecessary posturing; a sign of immaturity, even. If Briggs had something to say, he said it. But never with rudeness or malice or without good cause, so that people were rarely offended. And if they were, then Briggs, who was not unfeeling either, considered it unfortunate but unavoidable. He had to be accepted as he was, someone without artifice or affectation.

  He stood at the rail of the Mary Celeste, staring back at the vague skyline of New York from which they had so recently departed. There were many captains who would have indulged in some after-deck ranting at being beaten back by a head wind within an hour of leaving Pier 50 the previous day and being forced to anchor off Staten Island.

  But it would have achieved nothing, except perhaps polite smiles from the crew. He had experienced a moment of passing irritation and then he had dismissed it, just as he had dismissed the initial, fleeting thought of not turning back, but sailing on against the weather. Having Sarah and the baby aboard had not influenced his decision to heave to. It would have been bad seamanship to have gone out into the dirty weather obviously confronting him when there was protective anchorage so close to hand. And Briggs was not a poor seaman.

  He was aware that the crew whom he still had to come to know would recognise it as the decision of good captaincy. Briggs was no more interested in impressing them than he was in earning their sycophantic smiles, but he had never forgotten a long-ago lesson from his father on the importance of a captain’s achieving the confidence of his men. A confident crew was a good crew. Even more important, an obedient one.

  Briggs did not regard it, therefore, as a completely pointless delay, but as time put to some purpose, psychological rather than practical though it might be.

  He heard movement behind him and turned as Richardson emerged from the main hatch, followed by the German brothers Volkert and Boz Lorensen.

  ‘Wherever we thought it necessary, we’ve double-lashed the barrels against movement,’ said the first mate.

  Briggs gazed beyond the man, out to sea. Although little after midday, the weather was so black that it was impossible to detect the horizon.

  ‘It’ll doubtless be a precaution we’ll need,’ agreed Briggs. The man’s initiative pleased him; his order had merely been to check the cargo.

  ‘If it remains like this,’ said the first mate, looking in the same direction as the captain, ‘there’ll be few days when we’re not awash.’

  ‘Best double batten the hatches,’ said the captain.

  ‘There’s already a smell down there,’ said Richardson, nodding towards the still-open hold.

  ‘There’ll be opportunity to ventilate,’ said Briggs confidently.

  ‘I checked the pumps this morning and they’re as sound as anyone could want, so I don’t anticipate problems no matter how much sea we ship.’

  ‘And according to the log of Captain Spates, there’s very little leakage.’

  Wind suddenly gusted over the deck and Briggs shivered in the winter cold.

  ‘Let’s move to my cabin,’ he said.

  Before following the captain towards the accommodation door, Richardson told Boz Lorensen to batten the hatchway through which they had just emerged and replace the boat upon its fenders.

  Briggs was already at his desk when Richardson entered. The man made no move to sit until invited to do so by the other man.

  ‘Any annoyance about drink?’ Briggs asked, as soon as the man was seated. The day before they had left the pier, Briggs had mustered the crew and told them he would not allow alcohol during the voyage.

  ‘No disgruntlement at all,’ said Richardson immediately. ‘I was a little surprised.’

  ‘So am I,’ admitted the captain.

  ‘It’s too early to say, of course, but I don’t think we’re going to get any trouble with them. They all seem good seamen.’

  ‘Let’s hope you’re not proved wrong.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Frorn our other voyages together, Mr Richardson, you’ll know I’m a man who likes a ship tidy run.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I accept it’ll sometimes be unavoidable, but I want no cursing, certainly not in the presence of Mrs Briggs.’

  ‘I’ve already made that clear.’

  ‘And I want it impressed upon them that I meant what I said during muster – I’ll not allow gambling. On a vessel this size, it can only lead to dispute.’

  ‘The men understand your order,’ Richardson assured Briggs.

  ‘There’ll be prayers on Sundays, to which all will be welcome in my day cabin.’

  ‘I’ll let it be known,’ said Richardson. ‘The Germans are Catholic, but they may care to attend.’

  ‘It’ll be more to worship God than denominational.’

  Richardson nodded. He sat respectfully with his cap upon his knee.

  ‘I’ll make Sundays the day for crew quarter inspection, too,’ decided Briggs. ‘I know it’ll be difficult, particularly if the weather stays dirty, but I shall expect the men to take sea showers, of course.’

  ‘They give the appearance of cleanliness.’

  ‘First impressions can sometimes be misleading.’

  ‘True enough,’ accepted Richardson.

  Briggs sat wondering if the first mate regarded as unduly restrictive the regulations he had imposed for the voyage. He hoped not. In his father, Briggs recognised, he had had a diligent tutor. Not that he had followed the old man’s disciplinarianism to the degree that he had practised. Briggs had never heard his father give an order directly to a member of the crew, but always through the mates. And that had applied to any of his sons, when they had sailed under him. Afloat, his family might have been strangers to him.

  At sea, no sailor had ever thought of passing him on the weather side when he had been walking the quarter-deck. Going to or from the wheel they
always had to go on the lee side and, if there were work to be done on the weather side, no sailor had ever passed the man without touching his cap and always to leeward, never intruding themselves between the old man and the sea.

  ‘The proper etiquette of the sea,’ the man had called it. While Briggs felt it important to run an orderly ship, he considered it impractical to be quite so autocratic upon a vessel such as the Mary Celeste.

  He rose, going to a small chart table beneath the cabin window.

  ‘I’m making a southerly course for Gibraltar,’ he said. ‘We might find better weather there.’

  Realising the invitation, Richardson rose, following him to look down on the charts, upon which Briggs had already pencilled a route.

  ‘What if the weather improves?’

  ‘I might change northerly, but I’ll let it set first. I’m not going to alter course at every change of wind.’

  ‘What about a return cargo?’ asked Richardson, as they went back to their seats.

  ‘Fruit in Messina,’ said Briggs. ‘We’ll sail as soon as we discharge at Genoa.’

  Briggs recalled Richardson’s recent marriage to the niece of Captain Winchester and recognised a point to the question.

  ‘When have you set your mind for returning?’ he said.

  ‘February or thereabouts,’ said the first mate.

  ‘Could even be before, if things run smoothly. Hoping for your own command?’

  Richardson nodded. ‘Something small, to begin with,’ he said. ‘Ply around the coast here, perhaps.’

  ‘Wife intend sailing with you?’

  ‘As much as possible.’

  ‘Wise decision,’ said Briggs. ‘It’s a lonely life for a woman, being a sailor’s wife. Mrs Briggs has sailed with me often.’

  ‘Not easy with children, though.’

  ‘True enough,’ accepted Briggs. ‘It’ll be more difficult when Sophia starts her schooling.’

  As if reminded, Richardson looked towards the cabin door.

  ‘Line should be up by now,’ he said.

  Briggs rose, leading the way from the cabin. As they emerged on deck, Briggs saw Arien Martens, the German whom he knew to hold a mate’s certificate, helping the baby into a halter. As he got closer, he saw it had been carefully made from thin rope plaited and then fashioned into a tiny bodice that fitted over Sophia’s shoulders, looped criss-cross over her back and then connected with a tiny belt. From the belt another plaited line had been spliced around a metal ring, the other end connected to another metal ring that could run freely along a length of rope that had been strung between the two masts.