Innocent Murderer

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  The dog whimpered in my arms, bringing me back to my senses. I had to do something. I couldn’t just stand there. I walked along the pack ice towards the bow, yell–ing the whole way and scanning the ship for anything that might rescue me, but the noise of the engine drowned out my voice. I might as well have been yelling at a rock for all the help it would bring.

  Again I became aware of the anchor line being reeled out of the water and panicked. The ship was leaving me here to freeze to death, just like Franklin. I looked at the chain for some moments before my mind got itself around it. My heart, already racing, had gone into over–drive. I wondered if I was crazy, but I couldn’t see a bet–ter way out of the situation. I ran along the pack ice to the anchor chain. Just three feet away, in a calm sea, if I had no choice I could do it. Even with the dog, I could do it. I was small enough. I put the dog in the hood of my jacket and before I could think anymore I backed up and ran, planting my feet at the edge of the ice at the last moment and jumping out and up, my hands reach–ing high.

  Both my hands grabbed a link in the chain and immediately began to slip. I heard the little dog yip and then start whimpering. Frantically I coiled my legs around the chain and forced one hand through to grab the other hand. I looked up and saw the gaping hole, the chain ahead of me sliding into it, the rusty stains from where the anchor had rested against the side of the ship at sea. Slowly the anchor chain raised me up. As I entered the hole the chain slid sideways, catching three fingers of my left hand that were clasped with my right, and I screamed. I nearly let go in pain — which made me almost cry out again.

  There was no danger of me slipping into the sea unless I lost my three fingers, which I decided wasn’t a good thing to dwell on. As my body entered the hole I had to let go of the chain with my legs and hung from my arms.

  The dog was no longer whimpering, just shivering like aspen leaves in the wind, but I really had no mind for it or anything else except the light at the end of the tun–nel. I had no idea how slowly an anchor comes back to its mooring, but by the time my head broke out into the light my arms were screaming with pain. And suddenly, as the anchor chain hauled my body out of the hole my hands were clear, the awful, grinding pressure gone. I had the strongest urge to let go then, but I hung on until the chain pulled me clear of the tunnel and I flopped down on the deck like a stranded fish.

  I felt the dog escape from my hood as I tried to get to my feet. I looked at my hand to see the damage, expect–ing to see a mangled mess of flesh, but all that was there was an innocent looking scrape on the three fingers that had been dragged along the tunnel wall.

  The dog stuck its nose into my face, not knowing how lucky it had just been. I looked up at the bridge but didn’t see anyone. They must have been busy steering out of the pack ice because I could feel the ship bumping and grinding against the ice.

  I got up and put the shivering dog inside my jacket, close to my chest, and made my way up to the bridge. In the twilight of 3:00 a.m. there were only two people up there: the captain and the third mate. I looked out the windows for the anchor hole, but it was hidden behind its giant roll of rope. So no one had seen me. I wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.

  “Bit late to be up isn’t it?” Jason had spotted me before I spotted him.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” I said.

  Jason looked at me curiously. “You look like you just crawled through a rusty pipe.”

  I looked at him in astonishment. Had he seen me come up the anchor hole? Then I followed his gaze and looked down at my jacket. There were huge, wet, rusty smears all down the front of it and my pants bore the marks of where I’d twined my legs around the chain.

  “You’re not far off. I’ve just come up the anchor hole.”

  He looked at me, momentarily taken off guard, and then began to laugh. “Good joke. And it’s called a hawse–hole for future reference. But seriously, where HAVE you been? You’re a rusty mess.”

  “Seriously, I have just come up the anchor hole — hawsehole — along with the chain.”

  “You’re pulling my leg.” He said it uncertainly. And that’s when the dog suddenly started yapping under my coat. He must have warmed up a bit. The shivering wasn’t as seismic as before.

  “What are you doing with Scruffy?” said Jason, relieved to be changing the subject. He didn’t believe me!

  “Scruffy?” I asked.

  “The dog.”

  “Oh. The dog. He was on the pack ice, eating tonight’s leftovers.”

  “He was what?”

  I told Jason the whole story — and then wished I hadn’t.

  “You must have been dreaming, Cordi. No one could come up the hawsehole. It’s insane.”

  “But I did.”

  He didn’t answer and he didn’t return my gaze.

  Instead he said, “You said you thought you saw a person near the gangway who saw you on the ice. Why didn’t they help you?”

  I must admit I didn’t know the answer to that ques–tion. It seemed fantastical even to me, and I’d lived it. No wonder he didn’t believe me.

  “I think you must have been imagining things.”

  I looked down at my jacket, at all the rust on it, and back up at him.

  He chewed his lip. “I’ll find out if the cook dumped food overboard, but I very much doubt it. We may be small but we’re a class act. As for the walkway being down? I’ll look into that too,” but he said it in a patron–izing way.

  I nodded and extricated the dog from my jacket to give it to Jason.

  “No, oh no,” he said. “Dogs aren’t allowed on the bridge.” He had the grace to look sheepish about that last comment since I knew that Scruffy had been on the bridge before. “Can you keep it till morning? I’ll let the owner know as soon as it’s decent to knock.”

  “On second thought, maybe I’ll slip a note under her door.”

  I stuffed the shivering little Scruffy back inside my jacket and had turned to go when Jason said, “We checked the ropes on the Zodiac. They were frayed.” He looked at me strangely. I wondered why he was telling me this. “I asked Peter, since he was the first to bring it up, but he didn’t know. Anyway, whoever started the rumour is going to get a piece of my mind once I find them. An angry piece. The last thing we need are a bunch of tour–ists who think the ship is sabotaged.” Somehow he didn’t sound very convincing and I wondered for a second if he was telling me the truth.

  I smiled. “The only person on board who seems nasty enough to create a rumour and get everybody all upset” — including myself, I thought — “is Terry.”

  A dark look flitted across Jason’s face. “Yes. It’d be just like Terry to pull a stunt like that.”

  “Has she pulled other stunts?”

  Jason eyed me for a moment before answering. “We think so, but we’ve never been able to prove anything because there is always a believable reason for what she did. It’s why she’s still allowed on the ship.”

  “And what did she do?”

  “There have only been two incidents but the polar bear was the hardest to take.” He reached over to pat the dog’s head as it peered out of my jacket and was rewarded with a high-pitched growl.

  “We were making a stop in Croker Bay in Lancaster Sound. If the fog melts we’ll be stopping there, probably tomorrow. Anyway, it’s hilly and barren and there are a lot of polar bears around so we stationed three guards with guns and asked everybody to stay within the bound–ary formed by the guards.”

  “And Terry didn’t.”

  “No. She wandered out of the perimeter and a female with two cubs came over the hill near where she was.

  The guard closest to her called to her to turn back but she didn’t pay any attention to him.”

  “How close was he?”

  “Close enough to hear easily. Anyway, she had her video camera out and was advancing toward the bears when the female charged. We had to shoot her.” Jason smacked his fist into his hand in remembered anger. “I was l
ivid, but when I confronted her and asked why she hadn’t listened to the guard she smiled her pretty little smile, held up her headphones, and said, ‘But Jason, I couldn’t hear through these, now could I?’ The guard was positive she hadn’t been wearing them.”

  “But why would she do that?”

  “Material for one of her books? Stories to tell her friends?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  I must have looked dubious because he added, “Look at all the embedded journalists — what do you think that’s all about? They’re not just doing it for their bosses, that’s for sure. They can feel a book coming out of it. There are hundreds of examples. Next time you see a nature film of running giraffes my money’s on a troop of trucks chasing them just off camera.”

  He laughed a dry hollow laugh. “But that wasn’t the end of it for Terry. It never is with her type. That night she had the nerve to come up to me and say, ‘Please have the pelt sent to my home address, but make sure it’s tanned first.’ I told her it was illegal and all she said was,

  ‘You’ll find a way, I’m sure.’”

  I looked out the bridge windows. The fog was glow–ing like an illuminated globe and I thought I could see blue sky skittering through it — a real stranger to this land of ice and snow. It was 3:30 am. The dog had started to squirm and I felt a sudden wet warmth on my chest. I felt like yanking open my jacket and catapulting the dog at Jason, but a cooler head prevailed and I merely said goodbye and hightailed it back to my room.

  The door at the end of the corridor to the outside was still ajar and I wondered what deck LuEllen’s berth was on. I closed the door and went into my room. I got Scruffy out of my jacket and watched him standing there, looking at me with big doleful eyes and shivering at high speed. I washed him off with nice warm water and then got a big towel and rubbed him until he was dry, which didn’t take long because he was so small. Then I cleaned myself up and went to bed. But Scruffy kept whimpering and whining and trying to get on the bed until I finally gave in and picked him up. He checked out the entire bed and walked across my chest to sniff the stuff on my night table. After three or four perambulations he settled in the crook of my knees, a warm little ball of fur.

  Chapter Seven

  I awoke suddenly to the sound of a rhythmic and des–perate thumping. At first I thought the ship’s engines must have malfunctioned and we were about to hit an iceberg. But as I slowly woke up I realized it was just someone knocking very loudly on my door. I started to swing my legs over the side of the bed and was sud–denly aware of a flurry of movement. I couldn’t figure out what was going on until Scruffy catapulted himself into my lap. If I’d had a bad heart I’d have died then and there.

  The knocking was getting louder and more frantic and was now accompanied by “Cordi … Cordi … Wake up!” I looked at the clock on my bedside table: 5:00 a.m.

  One and a half hours sleep and I felt like a zombie — but at least I didn’t feel sick. The relentless pounding contin–ued and I cradled the little dog in my arm and went to answer the door in my PJs.

  I should have known. Perhaps if I’d had more sleep I would have. When I opened the door there stood LuEl–len, looking desperate enough to highjack a ship. The hall lighting wasn’t kind to her face and I tried not to react to what the baseball cap and jacket had hidden. Who knows how much cosmetic surgery she’d had to try to fix the crooked, flattened nose, the caved-in cheek–bone, and the numerous scars snaking across her face. In this light I could see the skin stretched so taut under one eye and along her forehead that it looked like it would spring apart at any time. But even her badly distorted face couldn’t hide her joy and relief as she caught sight of Scruffy. As for Scruffy, his legs were moving like wind–mills as he tried to get a purchase on my arm to jump into hers. I took him in my hands and handed him over.

  We stood there on the threshold of my door; me feeling uncomfortable, LuEllen ignoring everything but Scruffy. She was talking to him a mile a minute when she suddenly must have realized how rude she was being.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said. “It’s just that Scruffy is everything to me. Since my accident he’s been my only …” she hesitated, “my friend.”

  I tried to see in her face the woman she once was, but it wasn’t possible to imagine anything but what was in front of me. And I didn’t really know who that was. She must have seen the indecision in my face, having seen it countless times before, but she made no effort to help me.

  “What the hell happened to you?” was what I wanted to say. But I didn’t. I mumbled something that I couldn’t even hear and one side of her face went up in a smile but the other side didn’t follow.

  “Where did you find him?” she asked as Scruffy basked in her love. Some people never get loved that much.

  I hesitated and then told her about the garbage on the pack ice. I didn’t think I had to tell her everything so I didn’t mention the hawsehole. I could still see the look of incredulity on Jason’s face when I told him and I didn’t much want to repeat it.

  LuEllen looked down at Scruffy. “We went to bed together as usual, and when I woke up ten minutes ago he wasn’t snuggling against me. I was frantic until I found the note from the captain. I’m so sorry I woke you so early.”

  I nodded away her apologies. “How did he get out?

  Did you leave your door open?”

  She suddenly looked guilty and stammered, “Th-h-he b-b-berth was so hot. You know what it’s like. I’m just down the hall from you, between Sally and Terry.”

  She cooed in Scruffy’s ear. “Sometimes he wanders, but I really thought we were okay and it was so stuffy. Scruffy could have died if you hadn’t had insomnia.”

  And I wouldn’t have had a brush with death either, I thought.

  “So you think Scruffy walked around the ship trying to find a way back to me and smelled the food on the pack ice?” She looked dubious. “I don’t know. Scruffy doesn’t like water.” Dear god, the poor dog, trapped on a ship and it doesn’t like water. “But he does like food.” I remembered the apple and smiled. Food tri–umphs over water!

  After LuEllen was gone I went back to bed, thinking about the sequence of events and wondering if they were as they seemed. The image of someone at the controls of the gangway haunted me; why would they not sound the alarm? It didn’t make sense — unless someone wanted me dead. An odd little shiver cascaded down my spine.

  The morning, when I finally met it, was gloriously sunny. And when I looked out my bow window I could see land. Colourless, barren, lonely, desolate land; the sun glinting golden on the cliffs making it look deceptively benign, a landscape suffering from depression and no more. But, of course, Franklin had known better and perhaps the landscape looked so barren and lonely because of all the sorrow it had wrought.

  I was about to turn away from the window when I noticed a familiar figure sitting on the deck. Sally was in profile and was staring intently at something, her face a tapestry of misery. Curious, I followed her gaze. On the starboard railing I saw Terry and that Arthur fel–low standing side by side, with Arthur’s arm flung lazily around Terry’s shoulders. I looked back at Sally. What was going through her mind?

  I put her out of my thoughts and got ready for our first trip ashore. We were going to Franklin’s grave — not his real grave, but a memorial. The Zodiacs deposited us on a rocky beach. It was an eerie place, with the last tendrils of fog wisping their way up the cliff face that lowered over the gravesite. How anyone could have lived here I couldn’t fathom, and we were there on a sunny summer day. Frank–lin and one hundred twenty-nine of his men had spent the winter of 1845–46 here. They built Northumberland

  House with spars and masts from a wrecked rescue ship.

  Three of Franklin’s men died that winter and many would-be rescuers would succumb over the years.

  It was a place full of pathos — you could feel the pent up strength of nature in the shadows, waiting to p
ounce, biding its time. Revealing its softer side, like a polar bear satiated from an evening meal turning a benevolent eye on a wayward tourist, but when hunger strikes unleash–ing its full fury on any innocent wanderer. The terrifying gulf between the softness and the anger is what makes it so frighteningly lonely and touches even those who never knew the men who died in anger’s eye.

  Franklin’s widow had spent a fortune paying peo–ple to search for him and on his gravestone had had engraved the inscription: “… and the anguish, subdued by faith, of her who lost, in the heroic leader of the expe–dition, the most devoted and affectionate of husbands.”

  As I was reading this, with a little lump in my throat, I heard a strangled sob and turned to see Elizabeth look–ing over my shoulder. She sniffed and hastily wiped her eyes with her hands.

  “Sorry, I can’t help it. My husband died far from home too.” She hesitated then added, “Lady Franklin was a brave woman searching for the truth about her husband.”

  Her words were laced with such wistfulness that I turned to face her, but she had already turned away and was walking briskly toward the Zodiacs.

  As I left the memorial I could see Martha down by the water’s edge, Duncan at her side. I couldn’t figure out what they were doing. Martha was taking up a weird sort of bent-at-the-knees, elbows-cranked-out pose. Then I saw the pebble. Duncan was teaching her how to skip stones. At least, he was trying. Martha’s stone took a nosedive from her hand straight down into the water.

  I told them what had happened to me and Scruffy, and they looked at each other and then back to me, their faces blank. I couldn’t believe it. “You don’t believe me either,” I said incredulously.

  “It’s not that we don’t believe you, Cordi. It’s just that it all sounds a bit far fetched,” said Martha. “The hawsehole?”

  “My hand. Look at my hand” I said flapping it in front of their faces. It was scraped raw, and looked angry and very real.

  Duncan took my hand and gazed at it for a while. “Cordi, if there really was someone there, as you say, why would they have not raised the alarm?” Echoes of Jason.