Sarah, who was crouched alongside the child, looked up at her husband’s approach.
‘Look what Mr Martens has made,’ said the woman, her delight obvious.
A great deal of care had gone into the construction of the safety line and harness, Briggs realised. He nodded to the sailor.
‘It’s first-class,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
The man jerked his head, almost the beginning of a bowing motion and then clipped the harness into place on the line. Pandering to the attention, Sophia ran the full length between the two masts and then turned, coming back. Briggs frowned, then saw that the connecting line against the bodice ran free along the belt, so that the child could move in both directions instead of having to call for assistance every time she got to the end of the line and wanted to return.
‘Really first-class,’ he said again, to the man. ‘Mrs Briggs and I are most grateful.’
Richardson and the sailor moved forwards, towards the hatch over which Boz Lorensen was still hunched, straining to get the boat properly secured. Sophia continued to scuttle about the deck, looking around anxiously to ensure that the attention was still upon her.
‘I shall have no fear of Sophia being on deck in that,’ said Sarah.
‘No,’ agreed Briggs.
‘I regret not being able to attend church before we sailed,’ said Sarah suddenly.
‘So do I,’ said Briggs, recalling his decision that day on the way to the shipping office. ‘But it couldn’t be avoided.’
The time he had intended spending in worship had been passed instead in the attempt to find a replacement longboat. He looked to the stern; a holding stay had been looped through the empty davits. Beyond the vessel, he was suddenly aware of the increasing lightness in the sky. He could detect the skyline now.
‘Weather’s lifting,’ he said.
His wife moved close to his side.
‘I’ve got a feeling, Benjamin,’ she said.
He looked down to her curiously.
‘I’ve got a feeling that we have got an excellent crew, an excellent boat and that we are going to have an excellent voyage.’
He smiled, enjoying her extravagance.
‘This is going to be the beginning of a fine time for us,’ insisted the woman. ‘It won’t be long before it will be “Winchester & Briggs”.’
He laughed openly at her.
‘I fear there’s some way to go before that,’ he said. ‘We’ve not one voyage completed yet.’
‘I can’t see anything that can upset it, can you?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t.’
‘Then don’t be such a pessimist,’ she protested.
‘Better if one of us keeps a sound head,’ he said, in mock seriousness.
She gazed up at him, her smile became an expression of affection.
‘I feel so very secure with you, Benjamin,’ she said. ‘When I’m with you I never think any harm could befall me.’
He became truly serious.
‘I’ll see it never does,’ he promised.
‘Me! Me!’
They turned. Sophia was standing at the end of the line, arms outstretched and face twisted into the beginning of tears at being completely ignored.
Briggs went to her, unclipped the line and took her into his arms.
‘You too,’ he said, nuzzling the child’s hair with his face. ‘I’ll keep you safe, too.’
‘That’s great comfort to me,’ Sarah said.
He looked at her, not understanding.
‘Knowing how well the children would be cared for if anything happened to me,’ enlarged the woman.
He looked over the child’s shoulder as Richardson moved back along the deck.
‘Getting better,’ said the first mate, looking out to sea.
‘Aye,’ said Briggs. ‘Prepare to sail.’
Frederick Flood decided it would have taken someone far more astute than any at the enquiry to notice a difference in his demeanour. That there was a difference he accepted readily enough, for just as he had earlier recognised his confidence, he now made a conscious effort to be honest with himself. It was his confidence that had suffered from Dr Patron’s visit to his home the previous evening. But just his confidence; certainly not his conviction that crime was at the root of the Mary Celeste mystery. The analyst was an incompetent fool who had clearly carried out the wrong experiments. The Attorney-General had had no scientific training but he had gained a passing knowledge during his long career. Solvents rather than water would have proved the particles to be what they unquestionably were, blood. It would have been impossible to take up the samples without taking metal scrapings at the same time. And of course those minute metal pieces would have rusted, submerged, as the man had conceded, for nearly a day in water. Once he had identified carbonate of iron, the idiot had considered his search over.
Flood frowned, hunched over his papers. Had he not kept Patron’s examination absolutely secret, Flood would have suspected him of collusion with either Winchester or Morehouse and accused him of something far graver than incompetence.
He sighed. A realist, he accepted that nothing was to be achieved by recrimination. The evidence – the damning, clinching evidence which he had this day intended to announce to the enquiry and shatter all these carefully rehearsed accounts of derelict ships on the high seas – had been destroyed. It merely made his job harder; harder, but not impossible.
He shifted his attention, to where a scrap of cloth at the top of his bench covered against casual examination the exhibits he intended introducing. The now useless sword was there; and something else, which might have as upsetting an effect upon today’s witness as he had hoped the weapon would do.
His gaze continued on to where Oliver Deveau, first mate of the Dei Gratia, was moving to the end of his evidence-in-chief, guided by the lawyer Pisani. Without the positive identification of blood, which would have shown the man’s evidence to be nothing more than perjury, there was only one course left open to Flood. By the expertise and cleverness of his cross-examination he would have to make the court aware of the utter impossibility of what the Dei Gratia crew were claiming. And if such an admission could be obtained, this was the man from whom it should come. By his own evidence, Deveau had conceded that it had been he who first stepped aboard the Mary Celeste on December 5. If heinous work had been done that day, then Deveau had been actively involved.
No one had noticed his slight lessening in confidence, realised Flood, as Pisani sat down and Cochrane invited him to take up the questioning. Deveau was clearly ill at ease; more frightened than Morehouse had been the previous day. Occasionally the man’s hand strayed up to his beard in a vague, combing motion and he felt his hair several times, as if assuring himself that it was not disarranged.
The inability to attack immediately with positive proof of bloodstaining was monstrous, decided Flood, as he stood up. It would have caused the witness’s immediate collapse.
‘It was a little after three o’clock in the afternoon when you set out for what you believed to be an abandoned vessel?’ said Flood.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What were the sea conditions?’
‘There was a tolerably heavy sea running.’
‘Describe how you first saw the Mary Celeste’
Deveau hesitated, composing his recollection. ‘Her head was westward when we first saw her. She was on starboard tack. With her foresail set, she would come up to the wind and fall off again. The wind was north, not much then, though blowing heavily in the morning. With the sails she had when I first saw her, she might come up and fall away a little, but not much. She would always keep those sails full. The sheet was fast on the port side. She was found on the starboard tack.’
‘So from a rowing boat you had to board a vessel under sail in some wind.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Is it easy to do such a thing, unless the crew of the sailed vessel heaves to?’
Deveau frowned. ‘The
re was no one aboard the Mary Celeste, sir,’ he said, as if he thought the Attorney-General had misunderstood his earlier evidence.
‘Exactly,’ said Flood. ‘So I will repeat the question. Is it not difficult to close to a sailed vessel in a rowing boat and then board?’
‘The wind had slackened, as I said. The Mary Celeste had virtually no way on when we crossed to her.’
‘So by the strength of your arms, you were able to row over and get aboard?’
The disbelief was pitched perfectly in Flood’s voice.
‘Yes, sir.’
Flood said nothing, letting the silence build up as if he expected Deveau to continue.
‘How many of you were there in this rowing boat?’ demanded Flood, when he considered Deveau sufficiently uncomfortable.
Before Deveau could respond, Pisani was on his feet, addressing the judge.
‘Can there be any purpose whatsoever,’ he said, ‘in going point by point over everything that this man has already recounted in great detail and clarity in his evidence-in-chief, protracting this enquiry far beyond the time necessary?’
‘I shall decide the time necessary for the conduct of this hearing, Mr Pisani,’ rebutted Cochrane immediately. ‘What need is there for haste?’
‘I was not urging haste, sir,’ said Pisani, aware he had antagonised the judge by a badly worded protest. ‘I was suggesting that the time of this enquiry is being wilfully wasted.’
‘Mr Attorney-General?’ Cochrane asked.
Flood half-turned, away from Deveau and towards Pisani.
‘My learned friend seems anxious for a conclusion,’ he said, ‘whereas I am anxious for the truth. Fractious for him though the search may be, I can only plead for his patience.’
Pisani refused to be overwhelmed by the sarcasm.
‘Like my learned friend,’ he said, ‘I, too, am anxious that we should arrive at the truth of the matter. And I am equally anxious that it should be the real truth and that it will not be obscured for reasons that some of us present find difficult to comprehend.’
‘I am experiencing no difficulty in comprehending the Attorney-General’s questioning,’ intruded Cochrane.
‘Nor I, sir,’ said Pisani immediately. ‘It’s the point of such questioning that is perhaps a little more difficult to ascertain.’
‘Then I must repeat what I said to my learned friend not five minutes ago,’ said Flood. ‘If he has patience, then it all may become clear.’
‘In which case,’ intervened the judge again, anxious to end the dispute between the two advocates, ‘I think we should continue.’
Flood came back to Deveau, aware that because of his interruption the man had had the opportunity to regain his composure.
‘You were about to tell us the complement of the initial boarding party?’ he reminded the witness.
‘Seaman Johnson held the boat alongside,’ said Deveau. ‘I went aboard with second mate Wright.’
‘What did you find?’
‘There was much disarray,’ said the man. ‘There were lines and rigging over the deck and hanging over the rail. I tested the pumps and found three and a half feet of water. There was also a great deal of water below decks,’
‘Was this the first thing you did?’
‘Sir?’
‘Commence an immediate examination of the condition of the vessel?’ said Flood.
Deveau frowned, aware of a mistake and trying to realise what it was.
‘Yes,’ he said doubtfully.
‘You knew from the moment of stepping over the rail, then, that there was no one aboard. Ill or incarcerated below decks, for instance?’
Colour spread from the man’s neck and then up to his face.
‘We had watched the ship for some hours through the glass,’ he said. ‘There had never been any movement on deck in all that time.’
‘Below deck, I said, Mr Deveau.’
‘We shouted, of course. Before boarding. Asked permission to board, as is the custom. And then hulloed again, as soon as we were aboard.’
‘Did you, Mr Deveau?’
Again the man hesitated, unable to see the Attorney-General’s point.
‘Or is that something you have just decided to add to your evidence at this moment?’ pursued Flood.
‘No, sir!’ protested Deveau plaintively. ‘It is as I said.’
‘You initially conveyed the impression that you boarded the vessel without any attempt to discover whether there were people on board … as if you knew the situation you were about to find.’
‘That was the whole purpose of boarding, to render any assistance that was necessary. We had shouted from the Dei Gratia for almost an hour.’
Judging that the degree of doubt at the man’s evidence had been sufficiently established, Flood said, ‘Go on with what you found – after shouting loudly, that is.’
‘I went first to the cabins, it being the most obvious place, I thought, to find if anybody were still aboard –’
‘But there wasn’t?’
‘No, sir. The main cabin, which was slightly raised above the deck, was wet. Its door was open and its skylight raised. The windows on the starboard side were nailed up with planks and canvas and those on the port side shut.’
‘Was the cabin in disarray?’
‘Sir?’
‘You’ve given evidence that there was some confusion and mess upon the deck. Was there anything in the main cabin that surprised you … evidence that might have been produced, for instance, in a struggle?’
‘Not a struggle, sir,’ said Deveau doubtfully.
‘What then?’
‘I gained the impression that everything had been left behind in a great hurry.’
‘A panic?’
‘Great hurry,’ repeated Deveau, refusing the other man’s words.
‘What had been left behind in this great hurry?’
‘In the main cabin, I found charts, books and the slate-log which had been entered up to November 25 and showed that the vessel had made the island of Santa Maria. In some chests I found articles of women’s clothing from which I assumed there had been a female aboard. Upon a pillow and some bedding in a bunk I saw what I thought was clearly the impression of where a child had lain.’
‘A child?’
‘Yes, sir. There was an outline most clearly marked. A small child, little more than a baby. In the cabin there were also some toys and a child’s clothing … dresses, things like that.’
‘The bed was unmade?’
‘Yes, sir. As I said, everything had the appearance of being hastily left. It was wet, too. I thought that was because of rain or squally weather coming in through the fanlight.’
‘What else did you find?’
‘There were two boxes, containing both men’s and women’s clothing. There was a work bag, containing needles, threads and buttons. And some books, all of a religious nature. There was a case of plotting instruments, a writing desk, a dressing case, some dirty clothes in a bag, a clock which had stopped, a sewing machine under a sofa and a rosewood harmonium or melodeon beneath the fanlight. Because of its positioning, it had got wet.’
Remembering how a long silence had upset the man before Pisani’s intervention, Flood stood for several moments without putting another question. Deveau began shifting, gazing towards the Dei Gratia lawyer and then beyond, to where Captain Morehouse sat in the well of the court.
‘Surely you discovered something else?’ said Flood finally. ‘Something more out of keeping than those articles about which you have spoken so far?’
‘Sir?’
‘What did you come upon beneath the captain’s bunk?’
Deveau’s face cleared.
‘A sword,’ he said.
From beneath the covering, the Attorney-General took the weapon in its scabbard and held it aloft. This had been the moment, he thought, when he could have produced the incontrovertible evidence of the fool Patron.
‘This sword?’ he said.
‘Why did I have to prompt you about its finding?’
‘Sir?’
‘You appeared to have forgotten it.’
‘You confused me by saying it was out of keeping with everything else,’ said the man.
‘You weren’t surprised to find such a thing beneath a bunk!’
‘No, sir.’
‘A sword, Mr Deveau! Does your own captain arm himself in such a manner?’
‘I did not regard it as a weapon.’
‘Not a weapon! Really, Mr Deveau, you are straining the incredulity of this court. What is a sword, if it is not a weapon?’
‘I thought of it as nothing more than a souvenir that the master of the vessel had obtained during his travels somewhere and put out of mind beneath his bunk.’
‘Out of mind?’
‘Yes, sir. It did not appear to have been put there with any care.’
‘Thrust there for concealment, perhaps?’
‘My impression was rather that it had just been put there … a convenient storage place.’
Again Flood allowed the silence, to show the disbelief.
‘What did you do with the sword?’
‘Do, sir?’
‘Didn’t you examine it?’
‘I believe I half-pulled it from its case … I can’t rightly recall.’
‘You can’t rightly recall, Mr Deveau?’
‘I have said, sir, that I did not attach over-much importance to it. I believe I might have half-taken it out.’
‘Why?’
Deveau shrugged. ‘It’s a sort of instinctive action, with a sword, isn’t it?’
‘I would not know. Perhaps you are better versed in the instinctive uses of swords than most people at this enquiry. Did you examine it, having extracted it?’
‘I believe I looked at it …’ The man’s head was bent, in a genuine effort for recollection. He looked up, hopefully: ‘I did look at it,’ he said. ‘I remember thinking it was of ornate design, the sort of thing one sees in Italy. There’s a kind of crest upon the hilt.’
The Mary Celeste Page 8
